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Westminster Christian School senior Carina Swenson is a Silver Knight nominee in the category of English and Literature.
One of the requirements of a Silver Knight nomination is a strong community service project.
“At my school I started a club for community service called Song of the Warriors,” she says.
The club began in her junior year, unfortunately when COVID was raging so it affected how the club had to operate in fulfilling its mission to spread happiness and joy to the elderly at East Ridge Retirement Village.
Swenson had hoped to be able to visit the residents of the retirement village, but COVID restrictions did not allow for that.
“Instead, we had to collect donations for poinsettia flowers around Christmas,” she says. “I gathered donations from the club and the school. I had donations of handmade cards and I was able to drop them off.”
Swenson chose East Ridge because of the mom of one of her middle school teachers.
“Her mother was at East Ridge, and she would tell her, send some students here,” Swenson says.
Apparently, the seniors were bored and wanted to interact with younger people.
“I was honestly inspired by her and what she was telling us about East Ridge,” she says. “The people there missed youth. It made them happy. I wanted to do something related to music. That’s a passion for me. I wanted to bring that gift of music to them.”
Swenson has been singing soprano in the youth choir at Old Cutler Presbyterian Church for six years now.
“I’ve been singing on quite a few Sundays and the Christmas concerts,” she says. “It makes me so happy. Music changes people and makes them feel so many emotions.”
At Westminster she’s in the more advanced group, the Honors Girl’s Ensemble.
“We’ve done quite a few concerts, Veteran’s Day concerts, Christmas concerts, fall concerts and the biggest performance of the year for us, the Musical Review,” she says. “It’s a medley of songs. This year we’re doing Mama Mia, a lot of Whitney Houston, and Aretha.”
Swenson is president of Tri-M, the music honor society.
“I’ve been mainly coordinating events around the school,” she says. “But, due to COVID, I haven’t gotten to plan as much as I would have liked.”
While she loves music, she plans to major in psychology in college.
She’s been accepted to the University of Georgia and Rollins, Florida State University, the University of Miami and the University of Florida. She’s still waiting to hear from a few more universities that notify students later in the spring.
At school, Swenson tutors for the National Honor Society. She’s the secretary of the Science National Honor Society.
“I’ve done a couple of class service projects,” she says. “Freshman year I did a service project called Feed My Starving Children.”
In addition to fundraising, students got together and boxed up grains and different proteins to send to hungry children in Africa.
In addition to all her school related activities, she also has her own business. Since seventh grade, she’s been making and selling jewelry and creating artistically hand lettered quotes.
She also paints custom shoes for people.
“I started off painting them for myself and then I started doing them for other people,” she says. “That’s where my business has taken me.”
Swenson has an account on Instagram and an Etsy account in partnership with her mom.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
