Leigh is an educator and an integral member of the PA-MOJA team. She first discovered PA-MOJA in 2013. After her mother died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Leigh wanted to challenge herself with an adventure to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. She decided to fundraise for an organization that aligned with her goals to support education and wildlife. Leigh found PA-MOJA online through the Ol Pejeta Conservancy website and that same summer visited OPC, met the PA-MOJA team and joined the organization.
On her return to Madison East High School, she decided that it would be a great educational opportunity for her students to travel to Kenya and experience another culture. The inter-urban school where Leigh taught high school Social Studies had a high poverty rate. Most students could not afford airfare to Kenya, so Leigh and the students fundraised to make it possible. Their hard work paid off, as they raised over $100,000. Leigh has taken three student groups and one group of educators to Kenya to learn and experience the culture, wildlife, beauty and challenges.
The Madison East School group stayed at the Rift Valley Adventure Camp, on the OPC grounds, where Kenyan students joined them for mountain biking, rock climbing, cliff jumping, wildlife safaris, and campfires under the Kenyan night sky. It was a genuine exchange of culture, shared experiences, connections, and team / friendship building. Madison East students also spent a day and night at a Kenyan secondary boarding school where they attended classes, ate meals, and slept in a dorm. Kenyan students usually wake at 4am! Though they let the US students sleep in until 6am. The cultural immersion was eye opening for the US students because simple differences in human interactions, like spatial relational awareness, became topics of conversation. They also were able to challenge racial stereotypes, learn about customs, and appreciate new food choices, every day.
One of the reasons that Leigh appreciates PA-MOJA is because it gives the decision making to local elders and leaders for all initiatives and scholarships and therefore Kenyans dictate what is best for their own communities.
