|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Gulliver Prep senior Marena Goodman is Gulliver’s Silver Knight nominee in the Business category. Her Silver Knight project is called Community Keys, a non-profit she began at the end of her sophomore year.
“The goal is to provide music opportunities for kids in underserved communities,” she says.
“We wanted to give younger kids opportunities to take music classes, which we had the opportunity to take when we were kids. And that helps with a variety of different cognitive and mentally related developmental skills.”
She created the non-profit with her friend Jackson Heise, who is now in college.
“Part of our first campaign was raising $25,000 from over 100 donors,” she says. “We sent letters to family, friends and anyone in the music community that me and my partner had known from playing music.”
The children they are helping with the classes are babies to first graders, so they are doing a lot of tactile things.
“They learn songs, and, in those songs, they learn how to count in three different languages -English, Spanish and French,” she says. “It helps improve their memories by recognizing patterns in the song. They are also recognizing patterns when using egg maracas, drumsticks and scarves.”
Goodman says the children are given two scarves so they can lift the scarves up and down and side to side. They sing songs and play with the scarves, drumsticks, and maracas.
“The really cool thing, over time, the teachers say, the kids were almost expressionless and unresponsive at first. They didn’t respond to any direction or someone speaking to them like the teacher. Music had a way of uplifting them and bringing them to life. The engagement with music and the little toys and instruments helps them.”
Learning how the music classes bring the kids out of their shells means a lot to her.
“Music has a way of keeping people connected,” she says. “Music has a way of staying in people’s memory.”
Community Keys has paid for eight classes at Cutler Ridge Elementary School totaling more than 160 children. The funding is on a semester basis and they have raised enough money to keep the classes going through the school year.
“We have done and are doing little projects at the school to make it easier on the families,” she says. “We did a Walmart gift card fundraiser to give to the families. We did a hygiene kit drive for the girls who don’t have parental figures to help them with hygiene.”
The kits include deodorant, conditioner, shampoo and sanitary pads.
At Gulliver, Goodman is in the Business Track, taking a business class every year. She’s the vice president of the National Business Honor Society.
Club members participated in a collection drive called Shoe Us the Love Campaign.
“We collected over 500 pairs of shoes,” she says. “For people who didn’t have shoes.”
She’s also participating in Kiva.org, a non-profit company that helps people with business loans.
“They don’t have to pay interest on the loans,” she says. “It can be from any country that can’t afford to pay back a loan with interest.”
Goodman is also in the National Spanish Honor Society and Mu Alpha Theta.
She played varsity lacrosse for Gulliver for five years and hopes to play club lacrosse in college.
So far Goodman has been accepted to the Honors College at the University of Miami and the Honors College at the University of Florida. She’s waiting to hear from Georgetown, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia. She plans to major in Finance.
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.
