April was a historic month for Kijana as we welcomed our first former fellow WorldTeach volunteer, Ethan Bloomberg, from the August 1987 group of volunteers as a visitor to the Global Innovation School. It was that experience with WorldTeach that set James P. Cummings on his path to founding Kijana and the Kijana Global Innovation School.

Ethan Bloomberg, who was one of 28 initial August 1987 volunteers from the United States, visited our school for a day with his family. We hope this is the beginning of more former WorldTeach volunteers to return and see and collaborate in investing in the region’s people, who created such a welcoming environment for us as young adults out exploring and finding our career and life paths. He lives in the Boston area and had previously shared a set of the Kijana Heroes Poster Series with his daughter’s school. The school displayed the posters for the month of February and recently they were still on display. We enjoyed sharing stories and memories with him and his family. We look forward to future collaboration with Ethan and family and continue to welcome others to our school and community. 

We also have taken advantage of another American human resource, Mark Leggiero, who also hails from Florida and has been serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the local community since January 2024. He is teaching science at a local high school and is an expert at 3D printing and other technology. With that knowledge in mind, we purchased a few 3D printers, which arrived recently. Mark has generously shared his time, knowledge, and talent with us, by setting up the first one and teaching some of our staff how to use it. Our teachers have begun by creating chess pieces to play chess. We anticipate that the 3D printers will help form the basis of the ability to teach more graphic arts in the future. To our knowledge, the Kijana Global Innovation School now holds the only 3D printers in Kakamega County and several surrounding counties.