Meet Alex Boggess, a 17-year-old senior at the Albany Academies, a prestigious private school in Albany, N.Y. (the school where Sakler Moo, a former member of the soccer team we sponsored, now goes, thanks to you).

Alex and I met Friday in Clifton Park, N.Y., and agreed to partner up to help get a gifted refugee girl from Myanmar a full scholarship to the Academy this September.

I’ve been canvassing school teachers in the Albany area, and our nominee is Eh K’Pru Shee Wah from Myanmar.  She is 15. I’m grateful to her teacher for nominating her.

I’m going to meet her next week to talk with her and take her picture. We believe this first scholarship should go to a woman.

I hope to expand this idea to two other private schools as well – they are also very interested in becoming more diverse.

Alex, a soft-spoken creative – he loves photography and is very good at it, chose as his senior honors project photographs of the refugee population and raising funds to give a refugee child a full scholarship at the Academy.

Alex and I realized  recently we are working on the same project.  We have decided to work together. Alex has access to the Academy community of families and alumnae – a strong source of money – and I have the Army of Good and a wide national audience on my blog.

All told, a full scholarship would amount to roughly $30,000.

My plan is that the school pay the bulk of the scholarship and Alex and I raise the rest.

We talked about a gofundmepage – if that is feasible – as one option to reach a wider audience, and we plan on meeting with school officials and fund-raisers to talk about how much money is available and how much we will need to raise.

I have a feeling we can put this together, having a partner on the inside is just what I needed, and having someone on the outside is just what Alex might need.

The school community seems very supportive of this idea.

And Alex has been taking beautiful photographs of the refugee families for more than a year. He understands the refugee drama well.

I was much impressed with Alex, he is serious and ethical and drawn to applying to schools like the Rhode Island School of Design and New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology, both are famous launching pads for creative careers.

These schools all seem eager to be more diverse, we’ll see just how committed they are. The officials I have been talking with seem very sincere.  I will push hard for a full scholarship, the refugee families have very little money.

Alex and I will be working alone, none of the non-profit groups I contacted wanted to participate. I’m fine working alone, that is what seems to work best for  me, but I am happy to have found a partner like Alex.

He’s serious and bright.

My idea is to find one or two refugee children each year and get them into schools offering full scholarships. I think it the most effective way for me and the Army Of Good to help refugee families.

Writing big checks isn’t always the best way, and these are mostly families  who, through no fault of their own, need everything.

In his honor project report, Alex wrote “I have grown to love my refugee friends and I also love photography and the Albany Academies. Through this project, I will merge these passions into an  honors project at school.”

By the end of our lunch, Alex and I had our cell phones out and were showing photos to one another and talking lenses and movies. We both loved the new Spiderman film.

Happy to  be working with you,  Alex, let’s do some good.