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Palmetto High School senior Alexis Blackwell partnered with ZooMiami for her Girl Scout Gold Award. The project was called Be Part of the Solution. She created a bee themed exhibit at the native Florida section of the zoo.
“The zoo agreed to maintain the exhibit, adding sustainability to the project,” she says.
The exhibit provides a safe space for mason bees to reproduce.
“It is unlikely visitors will come across the bees; however, it still serves a beneficial purpose,” she says. “It’s a good opportunity to educate people who drop by.”
The second component of the project was creating a petition against the chemical Neonics.
“We got around 200 signatures or more,” she says. “The main purpose was to spread education. There is a written explanation of the chemical’s negative effects that must be read before signing.”
The petition was submitted, and while local action wasn’t taken, she says she knew it was a longshot.
“The main goal of the petition is to spread education and awareness,” she says. “It is important to create noise around the issue.”
To that end, she secured a booth at the Coral Reef Farmer’s Market.
“I collected signatures for the petition and passed out educational pamphlets that told people about the declining bee population,” she says. “I also passed out marigold plants, which are effective in attracting bees. And collected donations for a honeybee house for my sponsor who works at ZooMiami.”
She began her project in ninth grade and finished this past spring.
Blackwell volunteers at Friendship Circle Miami for the Sunday Children’s Teen Tween Circle.
She goes every other Sunday. She worked with the same boy for a year and a half but had to switch when they moved to a new campus because of construction. Since then, the boy hasn’t been participating so she works with a new child each session.
She serves as co-president of the Children’s Trust Youth Advisory Committee of West Kendall.
“We create different service projects to target issues within our community,” she says.
One of the projects was collecting water bottles and distributing them to different events.
The pandemic slowed down some of the project but last year they were able to go full speed again.
“The one I focused on was body positivity,” she says. “We created posters for school bathrooms that spread positive messages, which will be put up this year.”
They also held an event with the other service groups.
“We gave out pamphlets designed to influence positive body image and eating disorder prevention,” she says. “We held different activities. We had visitors make bracelets with positive messages on them and posters with five things they could do for their body to keep it healthy – a promise to yourself.”
The advisory board usually brainstorms new ideas in the beginning of the school year.
At Palmetto she’s the president of Amnesty International.
“This year, we are partnering with a few different clubs,” she says. “We are planning on holding a presentation on civic engagement.”
She hopes to spread awareness on the importance of voting and civic engagement in general.
She is a member of the National Honor Society, a historian for Student Council.
For college, she’s leaning toward a major in the STEM area, possibility engineering. She’s applying to the University of Florida. Florida State, Berkeley in California, the University of North Carolina and the University of South Florida.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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