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Palmer Trinity junior Julianne Hartigan started a school club called Read to Lead to help children with literacy at lower income schools.
“Going to Palmer Trinity, I’m blessed,” she says. “I wanted the opportunity to help out other students in my area.”
A family friend works as a librarian at a low-income school, and Hartigan said it’s sad to see how students at those schools don’t have the opportunities she and her brother do.
The first project was a book drive in November/December. They collected more than 200 books, mostly picture books. The books were donated to the library at Olympia Heights Elementary. Club members also spent time with the children.
“It was awesome,” she says. “We did some Christmas ornaments, and we did arts and crafts activities. We made little cards for them to take home. We are trying to do the visits every month. We will do another one before they get out of school,”
Hartigan’s community service includes being on the board for Twenty Little Working Girls. She’s in charge of community donations for local organizations.
“I’ll reach out and see what they need,” she says. “And including new organizations in Miami for us to connect with.”
She says they collected art supplies to donate to Branches, an afterschool program for students, which is partnered with Achieve Miami. It offers after-school activities and tutoring.
Hartigan visited the organization and then asked what they needed and was told the big need was for art supplies.
“We work with Lotus House, Kristi Jouse, Branches and the Underline,” she says.
At Palmer, she runs varsity Cross Country and is on the varsity Track and Field team.
“Running is a passion of mine,” she says.
It’s also the basis for another community service project. A teammate started the Unified Strides service project. They work with Special Olympics.
“It’s promoting inclusion in track and field for student athletes with intellectual disabilities,” she says.
Next year she’ll take over with another teammate.
“I’ll be coordinating events with special Olympic candidates, to work unified events,” she says. “We’ll do a 4 x 1 relays with students with intellectual disabilities and two Palmer Trinity athletes
They started out working with one school but expanded the number of schools once they partnered with the Special Olympics committee.
“We had one big meet,” she says. “It went awesome. We got a bunch of student volunteers from our school. Some of the students from OPA come on our Saturday practices and we’ll do workouts and drills.”
She says she may want to get an earlier start next school year, possibly around October.
“We have high expectations for it to continue to grow,” she says. “We want it to be the biggest event in the southeast region of the U.S.”
Hartigan is a Palmer Trinity Student Ambassador.
“We serve as a group guide to prospective families at my school,” she says. “We will do tours for families that are interested. We advocate for Palmer Trinity.”
Another important club for her is Model United Nations. She won the Ambassador Award at the MiaMun hosted by Palmer Trinity. At Warrior MUN, she won Best Delegate.
Hartigan was president of the Class of 2025 for two years. This year she’s the historian.
Next year she’ll be the Palmer Trinity Student Government President. Outside of school she expects to be in leadership for Twenty Little Working Girls.
Another club she started is Falcon Leaders of Tomorrow.
“It’s for leadership minded students interested in finding tools for leadership,” she says.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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