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Palmer Trinity School senior Scout (Olivia) Dingman volunteers for The Center for Great Apes, a sanctuary that rescues chimpanzees and orangutans.
“It’s the only sanctuary in the US that rescues orangutans,” she says. “They only rescue apes that cannot be put back in the wild.”
The center started out locally but is now based in Wauchula in Central Florida.
“We go up pretty often. We are not trained to work with the apes, so it’s volunteering for events or cleaning up after hurricanes. We paint tropical murals.”
Her family has been involved with the center since before she was born.
“I visited when I was six,” she says. “When I was eight, I started fundraising. I would have birthday parties and instead of gifts I asked for donations. Then I had lemonade stands, I also launched the Ape Ambassador Club.”
She brought the club to her elementary school. Her family and friends outside of school also became involved.
At a young age she helped with the Art4Apes event that is run during the Art Basel time frame.
“Before the pandemic, it was in person,” she says. “The location would change. I would usher people in, I would sell tee shirts. Since the pandemic, it has moved online, and my role has changed to recruiting more competitors to submit their art.”
The art and photography contest is open to young people and adults. Prize money is awarded to the winners.
Dingman has been helping co-curate three exhibits for the center’s Thirtieth Anniversary.
“This is actually separate from Art4Apes,” she says. “This is art by the apes.”
Locally, Dingman does beach clean ups with Blue Scholars which offers marine education to Title 1 schools.
Dingman volunteers with Achieve Miami, going to Caribbean K-12 one Saturday a month.
She will return this year once she finishes with college applications.
Some of the schools she’s applying to include Brown, Boston University, Barnard College, and University of Florida.
She thinks she wants to major in something in the Humanities.
Dingman recently visited Africa for the Round Square International Conference in Kenya.
“Palmer Trinity is part of this, and it connects a ton of international schools,” she says.
“While we were there, we did service work. We had a week in the conservancy.”
They also worked at a school for a few days helping build a greenhouse.
“So kids can have access to nutritious food,” she says.
Dingman is interested in joining the Peace Corp or teaching in another country.
“I want it to go to something good,” she says.
At Palmer Trinity, Dingman is a vice president of the Social Justice Club.
“We come together to talk about civil rights issues,” she says.
She’s one of the founding members of the Metamorphosis Club.
“It’s centered on women’s rights,” she says. “We talk about it in our meetings. We’ve raised money to go to women’s shelters. When there are marches, we tell our members. We have roundtables and break up into groups and they talk about issues.”
Dingman is also a member of the Environmental Action Club.
“We go on beach clean ups, and we have a Plant in Every Classroom Program. We give pothos plants to students. We propagate them in water, pick them up, put them in soil, and grow them.”
She is also a Peer Counselor, helping the school’s mental health counselors by being available to talk to students who need help and find it easier to talk to fellow students about issues at school.
“You have opportunities to talk to students who are struggling,” she says.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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