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Miami Palmetto High School rising senior Danny Mazer created his own community service organization called Solution Youth.
The biggest project they do is called The Pillow Party.
“We have donated over 10,000 pillows and pillowcases to the Chapman Partnership for the Homeless,” he says.
The pillows are purchased online from Target and Mazer will drive as long as two hours to pick up a shipment.
He started the project after going to a homeless shelter with his Mom, brother and his former biology teacher who had experience with the system.
“We started by collecting books and building bookshelves,” he says.
Then they moved on to collecting pillows.
“Women get evicted,” he says. “They are usually working multiple jobs, and all their belongings are on the front lawn. And most of the belongings are gone.”
They asked the residents ‘what is the one thing that is gone that you wish you could get back?’
“And almost always, the answer is my own pillow,” he says. “That struck me. It’s something I take for granted. I looked at my brother, my mother and my teacher and said, ‘we can make this happen’.”
Mazer says they brainstormed ideas on what would work best. He made Instagram and Facebook posts telling the story and about the collection.
“Explaining how I got there, why I got there and what I was doing,” he says. “From there we collected. I have a great picture of my spare room filled to the top with pillows.”
This year, Mazer says they donated pillows to two shelters, the Chapman Partnership shelters in downtown Miami and in Homestead.
“Every single resident at both shelters went to bed with the pillow they will have from now on,” he says.
The pillows and pillowcases have to be in brand new packaging.
“We send the link out for the best pillows. They are from Target and Kohls,” he says.
Because the stores don’t keep hundreds of pillows on site, they are usually shipped to the stores, and he picks them up.
At Palmetto, Mazer is the incoming student council president. His goal is to increase school spirit.
He’s a member of the Jewish Student Union and the National Honor Society.
This past school year he was the chair of the Pinecrest Youth Advisory Committee. This coming year his role will be as a mentor.
Mazer was the youngest member of YAC, starting in eighth grade. And he will be the oldest member next year.
He’s the treasurer for Clean Aqua, an environmental community service organization.
He plays varsity tennis for Palmetto. He’s hoping to be in a leadership role on the team for the upcoming season.
Outside of school, he’s a member of the Co-Exist Program at Temple Beth Am.
“We go around and experience different cultures,” he says.
He’s also in the Teen Social Justice Fellowship and went to Guatemala earlier this year to build an addition to a school.
“I was laying concrete for three days,” he says. “I spent a lot of time with the kids who go to the school.”
The group will go to Colombia next year.
Mazer also participated in a Teen Israel Academy.
“They flew an incredible professor down, she would arm us with information to combat antisemitism or anti-Zionism,” he says. “I was one of 15 kids in all of Miami.”
Last year, he took a summer class at the University of Michigan on Business Tips and Entrepreneurial Identity.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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