#lilkidsbigstuff

 In the next round of Chari Plush products, Maya Meena is selling aprons & gift bags. 30% of all proceeds will go charity. This time, we will be supporting holiday gifts for kids in need & Journi's Hope. Journi's hope is a newly founded charity serving the immigrant, refugee, & minority groups. Jouni's Hope has been a critical ally to helping fight food insecurity in the Lexington area. To see how you can support, contact journishope@gmail.com 

Check out her News spot on WKYT's Out and About with DeeAnn Stevens above.

Chari Plush is Maya's first business where she obtained a $50 interest free loan from her parents to start. She handmade and sold plush toys. More than 30% of every sale was contributed to Seedleaf, a local non profit that grows food and nourishes communities in Lexington for free. The total funds raised on this activity was $1136 that included a match by Toyota. This was a total not including her loan repayment. The business is currently debt-free. $50 seed money exploded into more than $1136 with an idea matched with hard work and support.

Learn more about Seedleaf here:

https://seedleaf.org 

Maya is deeply saddened about the social injustices, systemic racism and the hurt of our African American friends. She garnered some support from friends to show love for our African American friends and to say that their lives matter to us.

In line with Maya's 4 step plan to make a better world, she had questions about the social injustice outrage. Our family conversations helped her make sense of current events and Maya shared her understanding on her Facebook page. 

Follow on Facebook to see the series.

https://www.facebook.com/197447187683682/videos/632558644318611

Maya was invited to speak at the Bluegrass Greensource Sustainability Summit 2020. The attendees of the summit consisted of stakeholders and policy makers in the city of Lexington. Maya urged them to move with urgency to address climate change mitigation. Maya spoke alongside youth activist Lily Gardner.

Maya learned about hardship and poverty that many of our heroes are struggling with. She wanted to find a way to help. A donation drive was organized and Maya delivered boxes of essentials to the Veterans Affairs here in Lexington. 

For her 5th birthday, in lieu of gifts, Maya requested that friends signed up for memberships with the Arbor Day Foundation for which they received trees. The gift trees were gathered and planted at this event. Maya Meena’s Last Straw and friends planted 100 trees. This brought attention to the fact that 100 trees would offset carbon emissions of only 1 million straws over the course of a year. In the USA alone, we use 500 million straws a day. Maya urged friends not to be discouraged but instead to keep going and doing every little thing they can as all our actions are meaningful in the healing of our earth. Supporting MMLS was the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government, The Living Arts and Science Center and the Bluegrass Youth Sustainability Council.

On Maya's 5th birthday, she gathered friends to plant trees in a Wilmore, KY, hosted by the generous and wonderful Ms Mary Miller as part of a restoration project there By a creek there.  Friends learned about building natural bird feed and about the power of planting just one tree. A beautiful amazing Story about the lady who had too many trees  inspired us all to keep this work going! 

Maya Meena’s Last Straw had the great honour of presenting in the 2019 Global Symposium on Waste Plastic at the University of Kentucky! Maya called for mitigation of plastic in packaging, better waste management systems and sustainable plastic alternatives.  It was such an honour to meet all the great minds working at solving the plastic problem. Thank you University of Kentucky and UK Sustainability .

Maya Meena had the honor of addressing the members of the Sierra Club at the Cumberland Chapter Annual Gathering 2019.

My friend Evey and I held a peaceful demonstration at our school. We wore our sandwich boards to breakfast at school and talked to all our friends who asked questions about our boards. Then we visited several classrooms and spoke to students about climate change. Everyone had a fun time asking questions and learning. We reminded our friends we have the power to make change.  Refusing a single use plastic straw is an easy and powerful way to start.

On her 4th birthday, Maya Meena held a fundraiser for an environmental non-profit her best friend Jordan Mills volunteers at in California. Heal the Bay is a marine conservation group based in Los Angeles, California. Maya hosted an art auction where 100% of the funds were donated to Heal the Bay. In this auction, Maya raised almost $800. She requested we got On the Move Art Studio to her party too, so we could support their efforts in providing art experience for underprivileged children.

Learn more about On the Move Art Studio here : 

https://onthemoveartstudio.org

Learn more about Heal the Bay here :
https://healthebay.org

UK Sustainability hosted the screening of Plastic Ocean. Maya Meena was invited to say a few words to introduce the documentary. Maya introduced Maya Meena's Last Straw campaign to the attendees.

A community collaborative art project involving six local restaurants and children from Lexington at Art Play Children's Studio. Used straws were collected and contributed by the restaurants. These straws were used to build a collaborative sculpture. Children discussed the dangers and damage of the single use plastic straws while building. 

Thank you to all the little artists at @artplayky that poured in their artistic soul, giving life to our straw sculpture. Let’s keep the conversation going and start helping our earth by giving up single use plastic straws. 

Learn more about Art Play Children's Studio here : 

https://artplaykids.com

Maya Meena at her first public event where we met children from Kentucky. 

42 pledges were received from children to #gostrawfreelikeme

The free kid- and family-friendly activities took place at ARTplay – creating a painting you can plant, making seed bombs, and learning about being a kids activist for our community! Chris Porter from Bluegrass Greensource made an appearance talking about ways we can create a more sustainable Kentucky.  There was also Earth Day Yoga with Erin Short of The Bliss Between.