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Westminster Christian School senior Marco Elejabarrieta is Westminster’s Silver Knight nominee for Business.
One of the criteria for a Silver Knight nomination is strong community service. In 2018, Elejabarrieta and his brother Alexander started a non-profit called Cleats for Colombia.
“We give used soccer gear to underprivileged kids in Colombia,” he says. “I go yearly to see my mom’s family. On these trips, we’d see the lack of equipment.
We’d see the children playing with a water bottle in the mud (in place of a soccer ball). And playing barefoot on a dirt field.”
They started out by contacting local soccer stores for donation drives, including Soccer Locker.
“We partnered with five or six teams in Colombia in Medellin and Cartagena where my mom is from,” he says.
He also partnered with his teammates, peers at school and family to collect the soccer equipment.
The gently used cleats and gear are cleaned and bagged individually. The clothes are folded and everything is placed into cardboard boxes to be shipped to Colombia.
“The shipping of the boxes, it’s really expensive,” he says. “I’ve started refereeing to help fund those costly trips and shipping expenses.”
He referees soccer games on the weekend for the U.S. Soccer Federation. He can choose games to referee around his schedule.
When they are in Colombia, they hand out the gear to the recipients directly.
“It’s awesome,” he says. “We usually lay out all the clothes and gear. And call them out by size. They get their own gear. We do annual trips. We essentially give each kid a whole set, cleats, socks, shirts and shorts. Once there is a surplus left, that’s where the coach can do with that what he wants.”
The coaching staff can also get supplies from what’s left over.
Now that he’s close to graduating high school, he’s seeking a successor who will keep the non-profit going.
“We started looking at family members and friends who want to take it over,” Elejabarrieta says. “My cousin in Colombia, he wants to take it over and expand it in Colombia as well, collecting gear from Colombia as well.”
Soccer has been a major part of his life since he was a young child. He still plays club soccer for Pinecrest Premier, and he plays for the school team. His club team made it into the state final four tournament last year. His high school team won the district championship for the first time in six years.
“I was awarded the most improved player,” he says.
He plans to focus on academics in college. He’s applied to the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Notre Dame, University of North Carolina, and the University of Texas at Austin. He wants to double major in Finance and Accounting.
At Westminster, he founded the first ever DECA chapter in his sophomore year. He is an Emerald Scholar in the Entrepreneurship Track.
“We are doing mock business start-ups,” he says. “Like Shark Tank type deals. We are pitching to teachers and different students.”
He’s president of the National Business Honor Society, a member of the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society, the Math Honor Society, the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) and the Computer Science Honor Society.
This past summer, he had an internship at Bank United. There he learned about finance, economics, and technology through sessions led by senior professionals and guest speakers on real estate, bonds, and the banking system. He participated in personal finance workshops and collaborated with a team to deliver a final presentation to senior executives.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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