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This year, Palmer Trinity School rising junior Joaquim Simoes created a community service project for Falcons for a Cure, a group dedicated to raising money and awareness for diabetes.
“I’ve had Type 1 Diabetes for over 14 years,” he says. “I can relate to the problem.”
He was two years old when he was diagnosed. At the time, he needed insulin injections to regulate his diabetes. Today, he uses an insulin pump.
“Which I put on my arm or my belly,” he says. “Every three days I change it. Through my cellphone, I go through my app, and I manage what I want to send through the insulin pump.”
One of his first fundraising efforts with Falcons for a Cure took place earlier this year.
“I created a group to participate in the Breakthrough T1D Walk,” he says. “I managed to fundraise money for the walk. You got to go there and see all these types of organizations to do all these things for diabetes. In my group we had around 10 people join. Around $2750 raised.”
Simoes says he’s been kicking around the idea of doing more with Falcons for a Cure for a while. The actual club had been around for a while, but it did mostly bake sales to raise money and have meetings.
He talked to the person in charge of service projects about the walk.
“I wanted to push it to the next level,” he says. “I wanted people to notice. I understand bake sales can help but I thought this walk could really make a difference. In the future I would like to create more events. I want to bring back the club and bring members into it.
In the future I would want to make it bigger.”
Outside of school, Simoes volunteered last summer at a diabetes camp for a week, helping kids with diabetes.
“I share that with my classmates,” he says. “It can change your heart. It’s sponsored by Nicklaus Children’s Hospital at A.D. Barnes Park.”
He attended the Florida Diabetes Camp in Ocala when he was younger. What he learned from the sleep-away camp counselors there, he tries to impart on the children he works with.
“I want the children to feel the same freedom I did in Ocala,” he says. “I wanted them to feel like I felt in Ocala. There were counselors there that would take care of your sugar.
There was a week where you didn’t have to live under the stress. And you could be a regular kid and talk to kids who understood. You did activities and sports. I felt free. It was a good experience.”
He plans to volunteer again this summer.
At Palmer Trinity, he is in the wind ensemble, playing the electric bass. He’s in Tri-M, the music honor society. He’s a strong player, receiving the John Phillip Sousa Band Award in 2024 and The Director’s Award for Band. He also received the Musicianship Award by The Instrumentalist Magazine (2025) and an award for the Superior String Instrument Solo by the Florida Orchestra Association (2024).
Out of school he is a blue belt in jujitsu.
He takes Chinese at school and participates in some of the competitions.
“I believe we got first place for second level of high school,” he says. “I have a class of seven people, and we all worked together to create a project, and we submitted it to the organization. We had to do ours on Chinese Traditions. It was like a marriage love story, reflecting the Chinese marriage market.”
He started taking Chinese in seventh grade and plans to continue through his senior year.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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