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In 2014, Palmer Trinity School senior Anabella Dodd and her brother Jack co-founded an organization called NicAid. She was seven and he was ten.
Through the years, they ran lemonade stands and now they sell Nicaraguan coffee.
“We use the proceeds to buy backpacks, shoes, clothes and school supplies and we used to be able to distribute them there,” she says. “In 2018 we stopped being able to distribute.”
That did not stop the effort to help the kids in Nicaragua. Instead of Dodd going to the Central American country to pass out the goods, her grandmother, who still lives there, helps them get the donations to the children.
“We usually take the proceeds and buy the stuff over there,” she says. “We have a teacher from Palmer Trinity who helps us. He gave us old backpack donations that we were able to use. And we got shoe donations as well.”
They raise between $5,000 to $10,000 each year for the supplies.
Dodd says they would run the lemonade stands from her house and then they switched to a lemonade booth at the Alexander Montessori Elementary School carnival. They would make the lemonade themselves.
“At Palmer we had a NicAid booth one year in which we sold coffee (no lemonade) and then the next year we combined booths with the Nicaragua booth to sell Nicaraguan food and our coffee,” she says.
They obtain the sought-after coffee through their uncle who still lives there. The coffee is popular and usually comes close to selling out.
“We’ve helped communities,” she says. “When I went, we visited two churches. And helped them. They used to be able to hold a little festival. We would donate toys as well. My brother and I would help distribute these backpacks. I’ve been fortunate to help, I’ve seen how people live in Nicaragua.”
She says she knows she is fortunate to live in Miami.
“A lot of those kids don’t have shoes to help them,” she says.
The school supplies, shoes, and other goods they give to the Nicaraguan kids make a huge impact on their lives.
Dodd says she and her brother will be able to keep things going even when they are both in college.
When she’s not fundraising for Nicaragua, she’s busy playing piano and singing. She’s part of Vocal Youth Miami which has rehearsals every Tuesday.
The group usually has one big performance every semester. However, she sometimes has additional opportunities to perform through the offshoot high school group, Voice of Miami.
“We are singing one (song) in Gallic, one in Spanish, and some in English,” she says. “From pop to jazz.”
In 2023 they performed in Chicago.
“The Chicago choir came down to perform, then we went to visit them, we did workshops and performed with them as well,” she says. “In 2025 we are going to New Orleans as well.”
Through the Voice of Miami, they sang the National Anthem at a gala and at a Miami Dolphin’s game.
She’s also performing at the University of Miami in December. She takes individual piano lessons in Cutler Bay.
Dodd is in the International Baccalaureate program at school. She’s a member of the Architecture and Design Club, the National Art Honor Society and the National Hispanic Honor Society.
Her goal in life is to become an architect. She attended a two-week Design Exploration Program at the University of Florida at the end of June.
“We did four different projects in the span of two weeks,” she says.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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