Palmetto High School senior Camila Guerrero is a member of the Miami chapter of Students Demand Action.
“It’s an organization to demand gun reform laws and gun sense in America,” she says.
The organization is linked to Moms Demand Action.
“In the Miami chapter we have a few hundred members,” she says. “I’m on the board. I joined sophomore year after the Parkland shooting. It takes action on gun sense reform, also, suicide awareness or domestic abuse awareness.”
Generally, the board meets by phone and then they have twice a month face-to-face meeting where they plan monthly meetings. Members usually have monthly events they can participate in.
“Like the Texas shootings, we’ll plan things around that,” she says. “A lot of what we do is social media awareness. We keep members updated with new things going.”
Members will call elected leaders to get them to support gun legislation. The students learn how to be composed and calm when speaking to legislators.
“With the recent bill to arm teachers in school, we did a lot of rallying against it,” she says.
“To discourage the bill from getting passed.”
In election season, members go to colleges and encourage people to vote. Guerrero is only 17 so she can’t vote yet, but she is pre-registered so she can vote in the first election after she turns 18.
In August, Guerrero went on her first Blue Missions trip to the Dominican Republic.
“We built trenches from a clean water source from the mountains to the locals who didn’t have clean water,” she says.
The trip was life changing.
“It was defiantly eye opening to go there, having this culture shock of not having the luxury of taking a shower,” she says.
On top of the primitive conditions, the weather was very hot.
“To think that the locals were helping us as well,” she says. “They don’t have water to keep themselves hydrated. It was crazy to think of.”
The village previously had a water source but it dried up about eight years ago. Women and children had to walk miles to get clean water.
“We had a day called Water Day, when we released the water,” she says. “We had everyone come around and released it from a faucet. It was happy moment for the volunteers and the locals.”
The Blue Mission volunteers not only supplied a water source to the villagers but brought clothes to donate.
“At the end we had a chance to purge out things we could give up,” she says. “I cleared out half of my suitcase to give to people who need it more.”
She hopes to go on more mission trips through out college.
At school, she is a member of Thespians. She’s been in most of the shows since her freshman year.
“I’ve been doing drama since I was about nine years old,” she says.
She’s the public relations chair of student council and oversees the Palmetto activities social media account.
Guerrero is also a member of the National Honor Society.
She’s also a Girl Scout and is developing her Gold Award project. Her project will be beneficial to the environment.
“To me, one of the most pressing issues is the environment,” she says. “I’m trying to be sustainable using resources. I did my research with different sustainable things.”
Guerrero wants to major in psychology in college. She wants to go out of state for college and is applying to Emory, Washington University in St. Louis, Rice University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Florida if she stays in-state.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
