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This summer, Miami Palmetto High School senior Sophia Duque joined a group of friends to start a community service organization called Silver Strings.
“When they started, I volunteered with them,” she says. “My friend came up with it, she wanted to get more members and I joined. I’m part of the outreach. I don’t play. I call the nursing homes.”
She says the musicians go to nursing homes and play for them. The students want to help the seniors in the nursing homes, especially those who feel neglected.
“Music is something very important,” she says. “You can connect with people with music.”
While she doesn’t play on those visits, she has taken up piano and has been playing for the last year.
They have gone to the South Dade Nursing and Rehabilitation center most often. They’ve also played at the Palace Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center.
At Palmetto, Duque is the secretary of the Human Rights club, Amnesty International.
“As a group we come up with ways we can do events at school,” she says. “We’re looking to organize some walkouts for Women’s History month or for education. We will talk about topics that are an abuse of human rights. We will write letters to local governments. It depends on the theme of the month.”
They are considering a program for December that revolves around building a makeshift jail, and they will write a script and act out what happens when someone has been unfairly treated for participating in protests.
“If you don’t know what you have a right to, then it is easier for your rights to be violated,” she says. “Knowledge is very important in that sense.”
The club gets information from the international organization on important topics, things like book banning and civil liberties.
“We have booklets that Amnesty sent up,” she says. “We have activities where we give everyone booklets.”
They talk about rights that come under the First Amendment.
“There is a place and time for things and when you can say them,” she says. “You wish certain things couldn’t be said, like hate speech, but they can, unless it threatens a life.”
Club members also participate in community service events at school. They took part in the trick or treat event at school for Halloween.
Duque is a member of the Class of ’24 Cabinet.
“We basically raise participation from students in school events,” she says. “We promote the events that as cabinet members we help set up. For football games, we had a competition between classes. We promote sports events, football games, swim and dive, volleyball and do fundraising.”
Her sport is badminton. She plays girls doubles on the Palmetto varsity team.
“We practice 15 hours a week, 13 weeks a year,” she says.
She goes to Miami Lakes to practice at Shula’s where there are badminton courts.
“It’s so fun, I really like it,” she says.
She’s also a member of Key Club.
“We volunteer at school,” she says. “We’ll do campus clean-ups. And I made these Halloween goody bags we gave to a charity.”
Another important organization for her is the Art Honor Society.
“I like to draw,” she says. “It’s nice and relaxing. I like mostly watercolors. It’s more like painting. What I’ve done has been nature, leaves or trees or flowers and fish.
For college, some of the schools Duque has applied to include the University of Miami, the University of Florida, and the University of California, San Diego. She wants to major in Political Science and go on to study law.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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