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Miami Palmetto High School senior Janese Fayson spent the summer working on her community service project, Smilez for Kidz. She collected dental hygiene items from South Park Dental in Orlando and made 54 goodie bags to donate to people who need help.
She chose dental hygiene because her mom is a manager at a dentist’s office and Fayson is aware of the importance of dental care.
“I started the project the end of my junior year/the beginning of summer when I had more time,” she says.
Initially she was going to donate her goodie bags to a women’s center but came to realize that elementary school children might need them even more. The plan now is to donate them after the holidays.
In September, Fayson was invited to a gala by Claudia Scala, CEO of Scala Inc. along with some other non-profits to talk about her Smilez for Kidz.
“I talked about my cause in dentistry,” she says.
Although the gala was set up for breast cancer awareness, Scala also donates to dentistry causes including funding braces for kids. She’s been helping Fayson take her community service project to the next level, including finding the elementary school to donate to.
Among her other volunteer activities, Fayson volunteers at Serenity House, a center that works with teen moms and underprivileged children. Last year Fayson did an event at a youth summit that included Serenity House.
“We set up the area, we had people from different schools come and talk to the kids about keeping focused in school and striving for better,” she says. “They spoke to the kids in a way they understand, to keep their heads up no matter what.”
At Palmetto, Fayson is a member of student council. She’s on the recruitment committee.
“A big thing we did online is keep in touch with the incoming class,” she says. “We made videos for Instagram and YouTube.”
They give tours for incoming students and she’s working on a video for all students about what students like about Palmetto.
She’s also on the student cabinet for the Class of ‘22.
Fayson is vice president of Pep Squad. Traditionally their primary mission has been to increase school spirit for football, but now they are working on expanding their reach to soccer, basketball and softball.
She’s president of Women for Tomorrow, an organization geared to empowering women.
The Women of Tomorrow franchise had online summits in which Fayson was able to attend.
As for meetings last year, they also held their meetings online but this year they are able to go to in-person meetings.
“It was exciting,” she says. “We have two mentors, Rita and Karen. They spoke to us. I also spoke, because I’m president.”
Fayson wants to increase membership and make more students aware of Women for Tomorrow in order to increase the size of the club and the diversity. One of the challenges is that the club only takes freshmen and sophomores as members. Interested students write essays asking to join the club and membership is capped at 60.
“It can help Palmetto as a whole, with the different people or groups that are prevalent there,” she says.
Fayson is also the secretary of the Capstone Club. She helps club events such as donation drives and donation boxes. The Capstone Club is tied to the Advance Placement/Capstone academic program at Palmetto.
Fayson will attend Syracuse University in New York State. She plans to double major in management and communications.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
