Birth of the Idea

In the spring of 2007, Professor Jok Madut Jok was quite busy. Not only was he teaching his history classes at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and traveling around the U.S. and Canada giving invited lectures on his weekends, he was supporting thirty-seven of his school-aged relatives in schools outside Sudan. Those thirty-seven relatives weren’t the only kids from the village of Marol that wanted an education. Each time Jok returned to his birthplace, he was surrounded by children pleading for an education. So Jok decided to build a school in Marol for both girls and boys. Jok drafted a plan for the school and worked with elders of his village in South Sudan. Together they set out to realize this important goal.

Nearly one week after Jok finished his proposal for the school, Eli Mathieu, one of the future board members, was assigned a world service project by his eighth grade humanities teacher, Shawn Kenyon—another future board member. Shawn Kenyon’s classes, consisting of seventy-two kids, decided to raise funds for Jok’s school, even though the Marol Academy was not yet an incorporated nonprofit. After bake sales and a car wash, the kids raised nearly $1500. The project concluded with Jok visiting Seattle to speak to the classes and to give a public lecture. This public talk raised an additional $400.

Over the next year, with support in Seattle and Los Angeles, and the efforts of our board incorporator and currently elected president, Barbara Mathieu, The Marol Academy became an incorporated nonprofit organization recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, under the skillful counsel and direction of Arthur Reiman, Esq., of the Law Firm for Nonprofits, Los Angeles. The organization has a board of seven directors and conducts quarterly meetings online—thanks to the board elected secretary, Isaiah Mathieu—connecting board members living in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Jok who travels often and was recently teaching in Oxford.

On the thirtieth of November, 2007, with the established nonprofit organization, Jok returned to Seattle. Isaiah and Eli Mathieu had arranged for Jok to speak to students in three different schools—Eckstein Middle School, Roosevelt High School, and Seattle Country Day School—and also give a public talk at Roosevelt High School later that night. His speaking spread the word of the Marol Academy and inspired many, raising over $1,000, and setting up future connections and potential “friends of the Marol School” donors within the three schools. The Marol Academy continues receiving donations from people (teachers, students and their families), in Seattle.

-Eli Mathieu, Spring 2008