Coral Reef High School senior Jianan Zhang has earned more than 1,000 community service hours in her first three years in high school. Even though she’s maxed out on her hours, she has no plans to stop.
“Something I’ve been doing is the clean-ups I organize all around South Florida,” she says. “It’s for a non-profit called We Are Nature. It’s based in Miami.”
She began volunteering for We Are Nature in December 2016. Since then, she’s organized more than 30 clean-ups and conducted a couple of voter registration drives at clean-ups.
“We do them at a lot of different locations,” she says. “We do them at Deering Estate and Matheson Hammock as well as a park in Pinecrest. “We go to the mangroves, because that’s where you find most of the trash. It circulates all around the bay and ends up in the mangroves.”
Some of the most unusual items found in the clean-ups include Virgin Mary figurines and small Buddha statues.
Zhang participated in events the weekend before school began. In September, she’ll take part in Discovery Days at Deering. At the We Are Nature booth she plans conduct an art program using recycled goods such as bottle caps, fishing lines, or other items found at clean-ups.
“It’s pretty cool. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a while,” she says. “I’m creating my own recycled piece and I thought it would be cool to do it as a community project as well.”
This summer, Zhang was one of approximately 300 girls who were in Tallahassee for Girl’s State.
“You get to run for elected positions,” she says. “I was chosen for the house of representatives.”
She wrote a bill on banning plastic straws.
She included an exception for the disabled. She’s familiar with issues the disabled face because she’s the vice president of Best Buddies. She’s been in the club since freshman year and has partnered with Coral Reef’s special education department to help organize events for Best Buddies, both in and outside of school.
“We have monthly picnics for the buddies and the parents of the buddies,” she says. “We were doing at Indian Hammock, but we are thinking of changing to Coral Reef Park.”
At school, Zhang is president of the Social Studies Honor Society.
“We participate in History Bowl and we do tutoring in history or other social studies courses, like Psychology.”
The Coral Reef History Bowl team competed in the national tournament and cane in sixth.
She’s also president of Speech and Debate.
“In Speech and Debate last year, I placed first in Regional Public Forum Debate with my partner,” she says.
She also vies in Future Business Leaders of America competitions. She placed first in Business Communications for the district, first Organizational Leadership for the district. She’s won the Community Service Achievement award for FBLA for a collection drive she undertook after Hurricane Matthew to benefit Haiti.
“As a school we collected an estimated $10,000 worth of goods,” she says.
That drive earned the school the Lead2Feed honorable mention, which came with a $2,000 grant for the school.
She continues to collect medical supplies and toys. They are sent to Haiti through a partnership with The Free Clinic Corporation, which helps supply Haitian free clinics.
In college, Zhang is considering pursing a double major in environmental studies and political science.
Her interest in environmental studies was strengthened by her summer internship at the CLEO Institute. Last year she attended the Yale Young Global Scholars program and specialized in sustainable development and social entrepreneurship.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
