MM is an incentive-based reading achievement program with more than 1,400 students at three Fort Worth ISD elementary schools. The program rewards students for reaching each of “Maven the Raven’s Milestones:” Ascent, Afterburner, Approach and Call Sign Maven. Each milestone represents a specific number of points that the students earn by reading books and passing online quizzes.

Hernandez met with fourth and fifth graders at Cesar Chavez, Washington Heights, and Van-Zandt Guinn elementary schools in Fort Worth and talked about his recent trip to Africa. Hernandez and his twin brother Justin, co-founder of IP, traveled to Kenya in August to help build a new primary school in a remote village of Kyanni located several hours east of the capital city of Nairobi.

Hernandez showed the FWISD students pictures of the former Kyanni primary school, which consisted of mud walls and a sheet-metal roof. The new school, a stone and cement structure, gives the village a much-needed facility to educate students for generations to come.

“I think it’s important for the students we work with in the U.S. to realize students in other parts of the world don’t have the same access to education as they do,” Hernandez said. “That’s why they need to continue reading, learning and excelling in school, so they can make the most of the opportunities they have available to them.”