|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
At this spring’s award ceremony, Palmetto High School rising senior Alexandr Kim won the Tulane Book Award. Previously, he won the Outstanding Freshman World Language Student award for achievement in Mandarin.
“It’s such a departure from English and Russian,” he says.
Kim used what he learned in his language classes to volunteer as an aide in the Mandarin class at Pinecrest Elementary.
Kim’s big community service project is Volunteering Miami which kicked off earlier in the school year Palmetto and has expanded to the New World School of the Arts, Miami Beach High School, and Coral Reef.
“It’s been growing at a tremendous rate,” he says. “Our site seamlessly connects volunteers and volunteer recruiters. We broker new volunteering opportunities for students through collaboration with more than 40 organizations and companies through our website, volunteeringmiami.org. We’re even working with several chambers of commerce.”
Those chambers include Miami Beach, Coral Gables and Coconut Grove chambers. Companies and organizations such as Pinecrest Gardens and Fairchild Tropical Garden also work with Volunteering Miami.
Since premiering in January, Kim and John Aitken have added navigation features so students can search by interest fields. They also updated the site to allow personalization of the applications.
“Our aim is to democratize volunteering as much as possible,” Kim says. “We knew it was impossible to proliferate volunteering without digitalization. Now you can even apply from the convenience of your phone.”
Kim says they have plans to make the site even more user friendly. They are also working to get more organizations to enhance the experience.
He and Aitken started work on the site in 2019 after Kim volunteered at the Latin Chamber of Commerce.
“Someone took a chance on me. I figured there needs to be a platform that eliminates the barrier of starting,” he says. “We also have an incredible team. For instance, I believe we have the best developer of our age group in the county.”
When he interned at the Latin Chamber, he also had the opportunity to volunteer at San Juan Bosco, a near-by Catholic Church.
“I helped take care of a group of elementary aged children,” he says. “And I had the opportunity to meet with Miami Mayor Suarez and Commissioners Willy Gort and Ken Russell.”
That summer’s experience inspired the creation of Volunteering Miami.
He also volunteered at a bankruptcy firm.
“My job was to digitize their system for the open cases so they could have a directory to easily reference from,” he says.
That volunteer job showed him that this volunteering database needed to be digital.
“The more efficiently we can get this to work, the more service we can being to the volunteering community,” he says.
He’s looking at his college options and plans to do college tours online. He’s considering a major in Finance. Potential schools include Georgetown University, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania and Columbia.
Kim is one of the founding members and incoming president of Palmetto’s Finance Club, which aims to teach students financial literacy.
“We‘ve had incredible guest speakers,” he says, “including a former CFO of Brazil’s largest health care company.”
Kim is a member of the National Forensic League and a member of the Chess Club.
“Everybody back home (Kazakhstan) plays chess,” he says. “ I’d love to start a chess club at my former middle school, Southwood Middle.”
He’s a member of the Social Studies Honor Society and a member of the History Bowl team.
Kim has a first-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
