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Miami Palmetto High School incoming senior Ava Stuzin is on the President’s Council for Friendship Circle, the program that works with special needs teens and young adults every other Sunday. Teens team up with the special needs kids to do arts and crafts, play sports, and do other activities.
“I like to do a lot of volunteering,” she says.
She says the teens make sure the special needs kids get attention and have advocates. She calls herself a dedicated, responsible volunteer.
Those on the President’s Council help plan programming for special events. She usually participates in the Sunday Circle with the teen group.
“It’s very rewarding to me,” she says. “Being with them twice a month, I also see them at school so it’s nice to interact with people at school and on Sundays.”
She will continue her senior year.
Her volunteer work is one of the reasons she won the Panthers on the Move Award, which is the PTSA Service Award.
Another volunteer job is as a tutor for the student run organization, Tutoring for Tomorrow.
The tutors are paid, but half of the fee is given back to the organization to be donated to charities.
“We pick a charity every month and donate half to them,” she says. “Sometimes we donate to organizations helping the homeless. Or helping places that help others in other countries.”
She usually tutors twice a week, and she generally has three consistent clients. Stuzin also tutors once a month at Palmetto High and Palmetto Elementary.
She’s a member of the Pinecrest Youth Advisory Council.
“The council meets once a month,” she says. “We also have to go to one Pinecrest Village Council meeting. It’s interesting to hear local people talk about local issues.”
For the advisory council, she organized the Neon Fun Run.
“I came up with the idea,” she says. “I worked with five or six girls on it. We wanted to originally do something with fitness.”
The event was held in March at Evelyn Greer Park. It started around 7 p.m. and it ended by 10:30 p.m.
“We had each person run two laps, we had a D.J. and a food truck,” she says. “We had over 30 people. It was a large crowd. We gave out gift prizes and free membership to the Pinecrest Community Center Gym.”
She and another member of the council also worked a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris fundraiser earlier in the year.
“We helped check in people,” she says. “We helped guide people. When Biden came in, we were by the door to make sure no one was entering or exiting. It was a really exciting event. Only 10 minutes from my house and I had the experience to be able to volunteer. I had a great time doing it.”
This election year, she’s interning as a communications intern for Young Democrats.
“I got in contact with the organization last year but started in August,” she says. “I help create social media posts. One of the posts was about how Florida got rid of the core sociology curriculum in college.”
At school, she’s the incoming Co-Chief of Staff for the Student Council, she’s the 2024-25 Historian for Interact Club and she’s the Online Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, the Panther.
She’s the incoming treasurer for the National Honor Society and she competes in the History Bowl for Rho Kappa.
In college she wants to double major in Political Science and Business.
Her college list includes Emory, the University of Virginia, the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan and Florida State.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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