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Miami Palmetto High School senior Kate Stuzin founded The Reading Skills Project.
“We work with Ronald McDonald House,” she says. “They give housing to families and children who come (for medical help). I ran a book collection drive and created a mini-library there.”
The families who stay at Ronald McDonald House with their sick children also bring the child’s siblings. Stuzin says a lot of families came to stay there during the pandemic. The families speak English, Spanish or Creole.
Stuzin collected books for kids in all three languages. On the first go-round, she donated 137 books written in English, 21 in Spanish and 12 in Creole.
Stuzin is familiar with the plight of children who have long hospital stays.
“I was diagnosed with Crohn’s in eighth grade,” she says.
She had a flare-up last December and January, around winter break.
“When I was sick, I didn’t have anything to do,” she says. “To pass the time I read.”
This allowed her to empathize with people going through similar situations.
“Reading served as an escape from reality,” she says. “To help them forget what they are going through and put themselves in a different headspace.”
Stuzin worked with a friend. They also ran an end of the year book drive, seeking STEM related books that were donated to the Miami Community Charter School in Florida City. They collected 159 books in total.
Stuzin has worked with Friendship Circle since seventh grade. She’s been on the President’s Circle since her freshman year and in her junior year she became president.
“I lead all the volunteers.” she says. “One of the main projects was a silent auction at the annual walk-a-thon. There we raised over $900.”
The walk-a-thon helped to raise money and promote advocacy for the special needs community.
“I think Friendship Circle is super important, especially this year,” she says. “A lot of community service programs weren’t available for teens to volunteer at due to the pandemic, and children with special needs felt extremely isolated from the community during quarantine.”
Stuzin is on the Pinecrest Youth Advisory Council and served as Vice Chair last year.
“I worked with representatives from Instagram to create our page and eventually get it verified,” she says. “It was an amazing experience and will help YAC gain a larger audience to support youth advocacy.”
She’s the Director of Marketing for the Pinecrest City Music Project. She is fluent in Google Ads and works to market music programming to students throughout South Dade.
This past summer, she interned with the Miami-Dade Office of Community Advocacy spearheading a project for Marriage Equality Day.
At Palmetto, she’s the managing editor for the Panther paper.
“I’m in charge of managing social media and help oversee staffers,” she says. “Recently I helped create our new app, Student News Source.”
She continues to write for each issue.
“I’m usually writing two to four articles a month,” she says.
Stuzin is vice president of the English Honor Society, and co-president of Interact. She’s involved in Student Council, the National Honor Society, and has been on the Class of ’22 cabinet since freshman year.
She participates in the Social Studies Honor Society and competes on the History Bowl team. Additionally, she plays for the Palmetto Girls Lacrosse team.
She attended a five-week intensive summer journalism program at Northwestern this summer.
When she goes to college, she’s probably going to major in political science or journalism.
Her college list includes the University of Michigan, University of Southern California, Barnard College, Northwestern and the University of Pennsylvania.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
