As a member of the community service organization, Twenty Little Working Girls, Coral Gables High senior Cathryn Cordes became involved with Touching Miami With Love. So when it became time to do her International Baccalaureate service project, Cordes got together with a couple of other girls on a gift card drive to help the Overtown social service organization.
“They use the gift cards as incentives so when kids do well in school they give the gift card,” she said.
Through Twenty Little Working Girls and her IB project, Cordes not only fundraises for Touching Miami With Love, she also goes there as a volunteer.
“We’ve gone about once a month this past year to tutor and hang out with the kids,” she said.
At school, Cordes is a member of the National Honor Society and Gables Earth, the environmental club. During her sophomore year the club won the Green School Challenge as the top green school in Miami-Dade.
“Last year we tried to do a project to do more alternative transportation. We put in a bunch of bike racks,” she said.
“We also supplied the kids who do ride to school with free bike locks.”
As a member of the club, she helped initiate a coral lab at Gables.
“Now we grow about 10 species of coral,” she said. “We eventually plan to transplant them back into the ocean.”
Cordes is the copy editor of the yearbook, after being managing editor as a sophomore.
“I switched to copy editor because I wanted to be more involved in the book, more hands on,” she said.
Cordes is a swimmer and she captained the Gables team this past fall. She was co-captain last year. She has been swimming six days a week, three hours a day since she was 8.
Cordes has applied to the University of Florida, University of North Carolina, Clemson and Georgia.
“I want to major in Kinesiology or biology. They both lead into physical therapy for grad school,” she said.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
