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My name is Matthew Ahl, I am an aspiring film student and I will be attending New York University's Film Program this coming academic year.
My latest project, "Project Milk", is a film I created for the International Breast Milk Project founded by Jill Youse. The International Breast Milk Project is a foundation that aids orphans in Africa who don't get their needed nutrition because they don't have mothers. Jill Youse decided to donate her breast milk two years ago when she was nursing, and since then, she founded this organization through which mothers from everywhere donate their breast milk (See Breast Milk Project for more details).

At my school, West Babylon Sr. High School, we decided to start a fund-raising project under the direction of the Health Teacher, Ms. Peggy Ehrensperger, to provide funds to help keep the Breast Milk Project running. We started by collecting empty water bottles from the cafeterias and around the school. We then washed and relabeled all these bottles with "Project Milk" labels. The bottles were distributed to students throughout the school and the students were informed to fill the bottle up with spare change by a certain date. Bottles came pouring in every week filled with change and students often asked for a second one. Why bottles? Well, we figured we'd make the fund-raising more intriguing by using bottles to symbolize the baby bottles that are going to be provided to the orphans. After annoying our local bank to convert all our change into cash, we found that we ended up raising over $10,000! The project was so successful that we decided to document it, thus why I created my video. The compassion in our high school is immeasurable- so, here's our story.