The Janet Aiko Sekiguchi GRANT
The Janet Aiko Sekiguchi Foundation offers a grant that may be used to support one school-wide program, a few smaller projects initiated by school staff or students, or a combination of both. Grant funds may also be used to enhance an existing program. We envision our grant serving as seed funding for either a new program or an expansion of a current program, with the aim of enabling the program to attract additional sources of funding.
Grant Recipient
We are excited to announce that the JASF grant recipient from 2022 to 2025 we selected is Entrepreneur High School (eHigh) in San Bernardino, California!
The School
eHigh was established in 2018 as an applied entrepreneurship charter school designed to be both inquiry-based and student-centered. The school
serves a culturally and academically diverse population of students, representative of California's Inland Empire communities of Highland and San
Bernardino. The curriculum engages students in meaningful and relevant learning experiences that foster innovation, creativity, and an
entrepreneurial spirit. eHigh is focused on merging academics with real-world skills in order to ensure students have the skillset to thrive in
their post-secondary journey. While the level of academics is college-prep, students also choose one of four pathways that prepare them for
future careers: Design, Visual and Media Arts, Professional Sales and Entrepreneurship, Food Service and Hospitality, or Software and Systems
Development. The school also provides students with opportunities for hands-on business experience such as running a student store where they
sell clothing they create and catering school events. If you're interested, here's a virtual tour of the school:
Inspiring a Young Entrepreneur Program
With the grant from the foundation, eHigh will create a program called "Inspiring a Young Entrepreneur." Their goal is to inspire students
to apply the skills they learn in their coursework to develop their own businesses. Staff will take 40 to 45 students to a large art and design
conference in Southern California called DesignerCon at the beginning of each
school year. Students will establish and develop their businesses during the year and sell their products to the community at student-organized
vendor fairs and pop-up shops in the spring and summer. The funds from the JASF grant will be used to cover the cost of attending the conference,
the resources the students need to launch their businesses, and the expenses associated with putting on the
vendor fairs and pop-up shops.