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Earlier this year, Miami Palmetto High School junior Estefania Cerna created a project called Dancers Dressing Dancers.
“We set up donation drives in dance studios and schools in the Miami area,” she says. “We have six drives so far.”
Dancers who can no longer use a gently used costume or dancewear can donate the attire instead of throwing it away. The donations will be taken to San Salvador later this month and delivered to ballet studios.
Cerna will be in San Salvador for a week, visiting the ballet studios.
Donations ended the second week of May. The collections went well. At the end of April they already had more than 200 items.
“We are going to take the boxes on the airplanes as checked bags,” she says. “We are going to hand deliver them to the different studios over there.”
At Palmetto, she worked with Key Club and the National Honor Society for the collection drive. Students donating items received service hours and points.
Donation boxes were also set up at Southwood Middle, Perrine Elementary, Miami Youth Ballet, Vice City Dance and Mandelstam Dance.
“My dad is from San Salvador, so I go every summer,” she says. “I’m a dancer myself and I’ve been volunteering at the local studios every summer for years. In El Salvador, the girls would go and take ballet classes in jeans.”
She got the idea after Christmas when she was cleaning out her closet.
“I had costumes that cost hundreds of dollars that we used for competition. I thought they could be of better use over there,” she says. “I got in contact with the Vice President of the Legislative Assembly in El Salvador. She put me in touch with the studios.”
Cerna says this is just the first of many costume collection drives. Her mom is from Ecuador, so she wants to expand and go to other countries in the upcoming year. She plans two trips in the 2023-2024 school year.
Cerna has been dancing at the Miami Youth Ballet for 14 years.
“They have been incredibly helpful in organizing my drive,” she says. “They were the first place I put a donation box in.”
At Palmetto, Cerna is a Key Club Director, a member of the National Honor Society, the Spanish National Honor Society, and a Student Council special events senator.
“Ketanji Brown Jackson came for the Hall of Fame,” she says. “I was a special event director for that.”
She works hand-in-hand with the activities director.
‘‘We help her plan anything and everything she needs to do,” Cerna says.
She’s also the outreach coordinator for Volunteering Miami. For that position, she calls companies and non-profits to ask them to join. Volunteering Miami has listings for volunteer opportunities that students can apply for through the website.
With all that goes on at the end of the school year and her visit to San Salvador, she’s also Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz Ballet and working on the Carnival of the Animals, which takes place at the Dave and Mary Alper JCC.
Cerna has started working on her college list. She plans to major in political science and minor in dance.
“I’m fascinated by political science and public policy,” she says.
She got an internship with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. She’s also scheduled to go to Girl’s State at Florida State University.
Last summer she worked at the law firm of Kenneth M. Kaplan. In order to get that job, she emailed every law firm in the Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay area.
Her ultimate goal is to work in Washington.
