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Westminster Christian School senior Natalia Pineda started a community service project called Smiles4AllMiami. It’s also a club at Westminster.
“I started it my sophomore year,” she says. “A lot of homeless people and people in Miami did not have access to a lot of dental products like toothbrushes and toothpaste. I did research and learned toothbrushes need to be replaced often.”
So, she set out to collect dental care products through her club. The first collection netted mostly toothbrushes that were donated locally.
That year she went on a mission trip to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
“They were sharing toothbrushes,” she says. “We didn’t have donations. We organized their closet at school. We took food and we had a pizza party.”
That inspired her to take action.
“The next year I started a mission trip to the orphanage,” she says.
Students from Westminster donated 1,000 toothbrushes – but they also got goods from students at Lourdes, Belen, Columbus and Carrolton.
There were 27 students on the trip. They packed up six full suitcases of donations.
“The orphanage gave us a list of items they had a need of,” Pineda says. “We filled up an entire truck load of stuff. They were special suitcases. We had so many diapers. They had so many babies this year.”
The list included socks, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, blankets, hair ties, nail clippers, bed sheets, towels, oil masks, wipes, and body wash. The children all received brand new toothbrushes.
“And they’ll have toothbrushes for years,” she says.
The teens were there for six days. In that time, they painted a mural, stairs and hallways.
They made a hopscotch court for the kids and created a cool pattern on the stairs.
Pineda plans to go again in April with another group of teens.
“This year we have already collected $8,500 dollars for the service trip,” she says. “They have a little wooden playground. I wanted to replace the wood. And paint it.”
She also donates dental products locally every month. Pineda had partnered with an organization in Little Havana and hopes to work with the Chapman Partnership for the Homeless.
“I went on a school service trip there,” she says. “I saw they have a mobile dental clinic. I helped clean it up. I pressure washed it. They stopped it for COVID, but they are going to start again.”
At school, Pineda is a member of the Emerald Scholars Program and is Westminster’s Silver Night Nominee for Digital Interactive Media.
She plays varsity soccer for Westminster. Pineda has played on the team since freshman year.
She is the Assistant Social Media Student Coordinator for Westminster’s Communications and Marketing Department and assists with Westminster’s social media. She helps run the school’s Instagram page. She also runs the school’s athletic Instagram.
Pineda is also the team manager for the boy’s lacrosse team.
“I do the social media and I help with equipment,” she says.
Pineda is a member of the English Honor Society, Science Honor Society, the National Honor Society and Rho Kappa.
So far, Pineda has been accepted to Tulane, Florida State University, the University of Alabama, the University of Tennessee and the University of South Florida. She’s applied to the University of Michigan, the University of Florida, Villanova, and Boston College. She wants to major in biology on a pre-dental track.
In the meantime, in her mission to become a dentist she has interned with a couple of dentists, Dr. Alex Trujillo at Simply Smiles Miami and Dr. Francisco Espinosa.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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