|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Westminster Christian School senior Lucia Granados predicts she might reach a thousand community service hours before her senior year is over.
“I feel like if I have too much free time, I feel like I don’t have enough to do,” she says.
Last year, she started the Pen Pal Program (now Pen Pal Club) in an innovative initiative to improve literacy. For that program, she paired elementary school students with high schoolers.
“They wrote back and forth,” she says. “We had a lunch, and they met each other for the first time. It was very adorable. I would visit all the elementary schoolers every week. asking questions about their pen pals.”
There were 16-20 elementary schoolers participating and she had more than enough high schoolers who wanted to be pen pals so this year she hopes to expand. The letters were sent out once a week. This year the plans call for an every other week schedule.
“A lot of the kids just wanted to do it,” she says. “Writing the letters doesn’t take much time. They are like two paragraphs. We did it for the whole semester. They were doing it for the enjoyment and creating friendships between the campuses.”
She was inspired by her little sister to create the program. She heard about the Pen Pal program being done elsewhere and when she sounded out her friends about it, they loved the idea. She worked with one of the teachers to organize the program and Granados went every Wednesday to help the children write the letters.
Throughout her high school career, Granados has been involved in numerous community service projects and mission trips. This past school year she participated in the Smiles for All mission trip.
“We visited an orphanage in the Dominican Republic,” she says. “We played with the kids.
We would play card games with them and soccer. We bought materials for a playground.”
The teens put the playground together and watched the children play. She plans on going again this school year.
The second week of school both, her junior and senior years, she was a counselor on The Gr8 Escape, a spiritual retreat for Westminster eighth graders.
“I try to be involved with all the different campuses,” she says. “I did tutoring at the elementary school. I would tutor second grade.”
She’s also a member of the varsity golf team. Last year the team earned second place in the District Championships.
Granados also plays lacrosse. Last year the Westminster girls won the Lacrosse District Championship.
“We were the first team to win a District Final for our school,” she says.
In the past, she also played soccer. This year she will be a soccer team manager.
Granados is on Student Leadership at school. They plan all the major school events from Homecoming to Warrior Week.
Her college list includes the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of Michigan, Purdue, and Georgia Tech.
“I want to major in biomedical engineering,” she says.
At the same time, she is considering going on to medical school to become a nurse practitioner or oncologist.
Her interest in medicine led her to do an internship at a prosthetics clinic and shadow an oncologist at Jackson Memorial Hospital. That experience made her consider oncology as a career.
“I really want to be that person to change someone’s life,” she says.
At school she’s a student ambassador, a member of the National Honor Society, the National World Languages Honor Society, Rho Kappa, Mu Alpha Theta, and she is an Emerald Scholar.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
ABOUT US:
For more Miami community news, look no further than Miami Community Newspapers. This Miami online group of newspapers covers a variety of topics about the local community and beyond. Miami’s Community Newspapers offers daily news, online resources, podcasts and other multimedia content to keep readers informed. With topics ranging from local news to community events, Miami’s Community Newspapers is the ideal source for staying up to date with the latest news and happenings in the area.
This family-owned media company publishes more than a dozen neighborhood publications, magazines, special sections on their websites, newsletters, as well as distributing them in print throughout Miami Dade County from Aventura, Sunny Isles Beach, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Brickell, Coconut Grove, Pinecrest, South Miami, Kendall, Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay and Homestead. Each online publication and print editions provide comprehensive coverage of local news, events, business updates, lifestyle features, and local initiatives within its respective community.
Additionally, the newspaper has exclusive Miami community podcasts, providing listeners with an in-depth look into Miami’s culture. Whether you’re looking for local Miami news, or podcasts, Miami’s Community Newspapers has you covered. For more information, be sure to check out: https://communitynewspapers.com.
If you have any questions, feel free to email Michael@communitynewspapers.com or Grant@communitynewspapers.com.
