On April 1, the CHS branch of the Meaningful Teens organization launched “Project Kuunganisha,” a program aimed at tutoring Kenyan high school students.

In this program, English-speaking CHS students teach English language and comprehension while Kenyan students provide CHS students with an insight into Kenyan culture. Project Kuunganisha is led by CHS sophomore Alexia Shafran and Aiden Thatcher, a junior at Boulder Creek High School.

“Tutors get the opportunity to teach [the] students English, but after, we have an unique aspect where the students then teach about Kenyan culture,” said Shafran.

Tutoring occurs once every two weeks for forty-five minutes and follows the same structure every meeting. The first fifteen minutes are dedicated to teaching English, the next fifteen minutes spend time teaching Kenyan culture and Swahili and the final fifteen minutes are spent doing different get-to-know-each-other activities. 

“For our first session, we utilized a Kahoot game where the tutors and students shared different facts about themselves,” said Shafran. 

This project is part of the organization Meaningful Teens, founded in 2020 by Carolyn Considine, Aria Capelli, Carter Considine and Isabella Capelli. Meaningful Teens offers math, English and culture curriculum, as well as creating relationships between students across the world.

“I started volunteering back in 2020 teaching English to a student in Ukraine through the project ENGin,” said senior Nicole Mazaheri, who founded the CHS chapter. “Not only did I help my student practice her English skills, but I was also a close friend to her as her country faced a devastating crisis in 2022. Currently, I still talk to my student once a week.”

Through promoting an increase in cultural literacy, the organization aims to create connections between tutors and students, both through education and cultural exchange.