Palmetto High School junior Allison Strasius won the Mount Holyoke Book Award last month at the Palmetto Awards Ceremony.
Her freshman year she won the PAW Award, and her sophomore year, the Core Values Award.
This past summer, Strasius helped fellow Palmetto student Mackenzie Farkas with her Days for Girls project that helps girls in Africa.
“Their goal is to increase access to menstrual care,” she says. “And education for menstrual care as well.”
Strasius helped Farkas make kits out of colored fabric. They sewed reusable pads and sent them to Days for Girls, which will ship them to girls in Africa.
The kits include reusable pads, panties, Ziploc bags and soap in a drawstring bag.
“They are intended for the girls to use them when needed and to wash them and use them again,” she says. “The girls can’t just go and buy a box of pads.”
Farkas asked Strasius for help with the project.
“She explained to me what the organization does, and we agreed that it would cool for two girls to help other girls,” Strasius says.
Strasius is the secretary of the Youth Community Involvement Board for Palmetto Bay. The board is comprised of primarily Palmetto High students.
“We help organize local events. We are able to influence policy through presenting proposals,” she says. “One of our members helped get plastic straws banned in Pinecrest.”
This is her second year on the board, which plans to work on environmental issues this year. They also helped organize Relay for Life at Coral Reef Park.
At Palmetto, she’s a member of the Social Science Honor Society. She’s competed in History Bowl since sophomore year on a team comprised of all girls.
She’s a new member of the Palmetto Honor Council. The Honor Council deals with students who have been accused of academic violations. The council decides on a just punishment based on the established criteria. The idea is to help students learn from their mistake.
She’s also the historian of the Chess Club, which documents club events.
“This year since we just started again, we only went to one tournament,” she says. “We did very well. We won second place.”
Her role is to run the club’s social media, which attracted new members.
She’s a member of the National Honor Society and the public relations chair for Student Council.
“I help manage all the social media platforms,” she says. “Beyond social media, we’re the bridge between the council and the school as a whole.”
She works with one other student to get the word out about school events. They remind students to buy their tickets.
“The current president reminded us that we sold out every Palmetto event for the first time in years,” she says.
Her main focus has always been the school paper. She started as a staff writer, moved to features editor and will be Editor in Chief next year.
“I’m really excited about that,” she says. “We’re going to revamp the Panther. We are going to have Palmetto centered stories.
We’re going to shine the light on people who don’t usually get attention.”
She’s written for the Community Newspapers Palmetto Sixtieth Anniversary Issue. Her story featured the theater department.
Her writing has been noticed. Strasius recently won a Gold Circle Award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Awards for News Brief Writing. She also attended the convention in New York City last year.
This summer she’ll be participating in a program at the University of Michigan. She’ll take classes in Mass Communications and Digital Photography.
