Education & Workforce Development

Jeneria and Yesalai, two warriors from Kenya's Samburu tribe, visited more than 800 students at Alta Vista Elementary School in Redondo Beach, California, on May 19 as part of the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative Sister School Program (BCISSP). The program pairs American schools with African schools to help educators teach their students about the worldwide decline of lion, tiger, cheetah, and leopard populations, a trend that Jeneria and Yesalai are working with National Geographic to reverse. Alta Vista Elementary has participated in BCISSP for three consecutive years, and the students raised more than $4,500 for their African sister school, Remot Primary, this year alone.

Volunteers from the CITGO Corpus Christi Refinery and local students came together for a beach cleanup at the Oso Bay Wetlands Preserve and Learning Center, a 162-acre natural sanctuary maintained by the Corpus Christi Parks and Recreation Department. Students from Cunningham Middle School and Foy H. Moody High School worked with TeamCITGO, an employee-run community service group, to clear the beach of trash and plant native vegetation. Afterwards, experts provided students with an opportunity to learn more about environmental conservation at the preserve.

A cast of Hollywood actors including Max Greenfield ("New Girl"), Grace Gealey ("Empire"), Dascha Polanco ("Joy") and others gathered at the legendary Hilhaven Lodge in Beverly Hills to perform two short-film scripts written by the teenage students from Ghetto Film School. The May 25 table reading event, co-hosted by 21st Century Fox CEO and GFS board member James Murdoch, served as both a celebration of and a fundraiser for the organization, which teaches filmmaking to young people from communities traditionally underrepresented in Hollywood. 21CF is the founding sponsor of GFS Los Angeles, which opened its doors in June 2014.

Sodexo, world leader in Quality of Life Services, is participating in a school garden-based learning program through its Sodexo-Jackmont partnership with Atlanta Public Schools (APS). The District Grown Gardens Initiative expands the taste for healthy locally grown produce and knowledge about food origins while creating a community that values healthy eating.

As AAA projects the highest Memorial Day weekend travel rate since 2005, and schools around the country begin to release their students to the freedom of summer vacation, CSX (Nasdaq: CSX) and its employees remind drivers and pedestrians to exercise extreme caution around railroad tracks.

In 1953, Winston Churchill said: “All the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind.” Over the years, eminent scholars and educators have echoed Churchill’s sentiments: If you don’t know history, you are condemned by ignorance to repeat, rather than learn from, the lessons of the past. The World Affairs Council-Washington, DC (WAC-DC) advocates a liberal arts education approach to help prepare teachers and students to be ‘global citizens’ in our diverse, multi-cultural and interconnected world.