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Senior Ava Seymour is Gulliver Prep’s Silver Knight nominee for Journalism. Last year Seymour traveled to Zahony, Hungary, a small town bordering Ukraine, to volunteer with Ukrainian refugees.
She created a documentary to highlight the Ukrainian refugees’ hardships and the extraordinary support given by ordinary citizens.
“I wanted to create something that people would remember and have an emotional connection to and inspire action,” she says.
When her dad met an acquaintance who had volunteered at the refugee camp, she asked if she could travel to Hungary to help out.
“My family is a lot about doing what’s right for the community,” she says, adding that her dad agreed to take her.
In preparation for her trip, she talked to the broadcasting teacher about borrowing equipment and how to approach the story.
The experience had an impact on her.
“Seeing people leave the train, their faces showed expressions of disbelief and uncertainty,” she says. “Listening to two mother’s stories and sharing in their grief, I realized that I needed to share a human face of war.”
When she wasn’t filming, she was volunteering. She went with other volunteers to gather and distribute items that would help the refugees with daily living.
“Over weeks working with volunteers and seeing the collaboration of various agencies working together to reach a common goal, I was inspired by these acts of kindness,” she says.
Seymour worked with the non-profit Parasolka Budapest that provided refugee children art classes and field trips.
“I will always remember their slogan, ‘We cannot bring them peace but we can bring them happiness’,” she says.
After returning home, she remained in communication with one of the organizers of the art program.
“He mailed over art pieces that the children made as part of the classes,” she says. “I created a website where people can purchase the art and learn about the children with the proceeds going to Parasolka.”
The website is continually updated with new artwork, each priced at $50.
Her documentary, “Colors of Hope: Slava Ukraini”, is now on YouTube, and has been shown to her fellow Gulliver students. She contacted social science chairs at various schools across Miami asking about the possibility of showing the documentary to their classes in an effort to spread awareness.
“I was amazed to hear that UNHCR saw my video and is now helping fund Parasolka in their operations,” she says.
Seymour was accepted into Yale University where she will study film and media studies. Her goal is to create positive social impact through her documentary storytelling.
At Gulliver she’s involved in Model UN and Breakthrough Miami where she created a Model UN elective. She serves as president of the Spanish National Honor Society and as social media coordinator for Student Government. Throughout her high school career, she has won various awards for her videos through the Florida Scholastic Press Association and Student Television Network.
Seymour runs the 100m and 400m hurdles for the Gulliver Track and Field team and is ranked in the top ten in the state in the 400-meter hurdle. She plans to try out for the Yale track and field team.
Freshman year she interned with the Lucy Project as social media manager, a non-profit that helps kids with dyslexia. Last year, she worked on a program called Phish Byte as Head of Marketing, a software she and her team developed to protect people working in Google Workspace against phishing attacks. The team placed nationally in the top three out of 900 applicants in the 2023 Conrad Innovation Summit.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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