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Last year, Miami Palmetto High School rising senior Maria Gomez started her own community service project called New Beginning. The project helps teen moms in Colombia by fundraising for a non-profit that takes in the girls and mentors them and then places them with family members willing to help.
Hogar Santa Elena is run by nuns who take in the girls and their babies for three to six months.
“When they send them off, they have a nice acknowledgement of what it’s like to have babies,” Gomez said. “They teach them the principles of motherhood.”
Gomez conducted a collection drive last year that brought in so many diapers, she needed two trips to take them all to Colombia. She went in the spring and summer with suitcases filled with donations.
“I did it at school in collaboration with the Florida Future Educators of America (FFEA), and the Forensics Investigative Academy (FIA).”
That drive was held at the beginning of March 2024.
“We collect diapers, baby clothes, baby toys, baby wipes, they brought us powdered baby milk, but the nuns said they couldn’t take that,” she says. “I donated that to a church here.
They took that in and donated it to South American countries.”
While in Colombia, she visited the group home and met with some of the girls. This year, she is taking a plastic park playground for the little children because they don’t have a good place to play.
“It has a small swing and a little slide,” Gomez says. “I’m going to take it this summer when I go to visit them.”
She learned about the non-profit in Colombia from her grandmother, who has been helping out over the years. Gomez visited the place before, but she has stepped up the pace on donations since she started her project.
In the past, if she or her family had clothing to donate, they’d take it to her grandmother and her grandmother would sort out the clothing for girls to take to the non-profit.
She learned for future drives to leave baby wipes off the request list. Although useful, the wipes are too heavy.
“I’d rather collect more diapers,” she says. “I was lucky flying over, because my dad works for American Airlines. We checked in five bags filled with everything for donation. And I still had enough so I had more to take in the summer.”
This time she made goody bags for the moms that included lip gloss and a scrunchie.
“They got super excited when they saw it,” she says. “The moms sometimes feel underappreciated. It made me so happy.”
When they went to visit the girls, they also brought cookies and ice cream. The visits are very emotional for her.
“The first time I went, I almost started crying,” she says. “They were introducing themselves, and there was this girl who was 13 with twins.”
At school, she’ll be vice president of FFEA for her senior year. She’s also the incoming co-president for FIA.
Gomez is a community outreach chair for Student Council. Her goal is to get more community involvement at school. She’s also a member of the Spanish Honor Society.
This year, she won the Palmetto Service Award, the Advanced Placement Scholar Award and the AP Hispanic Recognition Award.
College is now on her mind. So far she’s considering entering college as someone who is undecided on a major. She’s considering applications to the University of Florida, Florida State, the University of Miami and the University of Chicago.
This summer she’s attending a summer internship program at Florida International University for architecture.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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