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Miami Palmetto High School rising senior Ilana Damski volunteers for the Miami Digital Literacy Project.
“I present digital literacy topics to different groups including middle schoolers, high schoolers and seniors,” she says. “My friend had started it. I like educating people on digital literacy. A lot of people don’t know how to use it properly. I think everyone should know how to use it.”
The group makes presentations at Palmetto Middle and Palmetto High Schools, the Pinecrest Community Center as well as the Pinecrest Library. They teach the seniors how to use the photo app on their phones and how to work on the computer, including how to access email and messages.
They teach the middle school students how to write emails and how to use AI in a good way, plus how to use computers to study.
“For the middle schoolers we will tell them to try out what we are teaching them,” she says.
“For the seniors, they’ll try out the things on the phone.”
They have made five presentations with the middle schoolers and another five for the seniors.
They went on hiatus for the summer and will start again with the school year.
Damski is the social action vice president for her youth group BAFTY at Temple Beth Am.
The last two years she was the member at large on the board.
“Every year we have to make programs and keep up the involvement in the youth group,” she says.
She’s also a member of the Social Justice Teen Fellowship.
“I went to Guatemala with them to help build a school,” she says. “By going to Guatemala I was exposed to a different community than the one I live in. I was exposed to a third world country and how people live in different conditions. All the people there were so very happy, even though they were living in different conditions.”
The Social Justice Fellowship members went to Immokalee to learn about the plight of farm workers.
“We learned about an organization about how big companies treated farm workers,” she says. “The farm workers were paid very little to work all day.”
In Opa Locka they helped set up and plant a vegetable garden.
“We also went to Washington, D.C. with the Social Justice group,” she says. “We were able to write a speech and present it to a representative at the capital.”
The topic she chose was immigration. “We were speaking on immigration in Miami and relating it to Jewish values in the Torah,” Damski says.
At Temple Beth Am she’s a Madricha, a volunteer position where they do programs with the kids at the religious school.
“We set up activities,” she says. “All have to do with the Jewish holidays or Jewish values.”
At Palmetto, she’s the Philosophy Club President.
“We start a discussion with some sort of philosophy topic,” she says. “We present our sides while keeping it civil.”
She’s also in the Psi Alpha Honor Society and the vice president of the Asian Culture Club.
“We give presentations on one country,” she says. “Afterward we do an activity having to do with that country. It’s usually an arts and crafts kind of thing.”
Damski is captain of the badminton team. She plays mixed doubles. The team won the GMAC championship in 2025.
For college, she’s considering applying to the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of South Florida, Emory and the University of Georgia to study Psychology.
In the summer, she works as a counselor at Beth Am, working with two- to four-year-olds.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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