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Westminster Christian School senior Rebecca Eikenberg created a non-profit called Together We Shall Love Florida. The organization’s goal is to improve the lives of Florida’s foster children.
The project is a family affair. She and her oldest brother, Eric Jr., are the co-founders while her two younger siblings, Patrick and Katie, will take over when she goes to college.
“We started it January 2021,” she says. “We wanted to do something for foster families.”
Family circumstances made the family aware of the need for foster families. Her family became licensed as a foster family and has taken in four children for a couple of weeks at a time over the last three years.
The siblings organize several events annually bringing together foster children from across Miami-Dade County.
They also organize an annual Christmas toy drive.
“We collect those throughout school,” she says. “Our school brought in over 300 toys and we delivered them to the kids prior to Christmas.”
Another event has been a day at Zoo Miami where Eikenberg and her siblings host kids at the zoo, many for the first time.
“We’ve also hosted a day in the Everglades where we take air boat rides and show them around the Everglades,” she says.
Eikenberg says the kids were thrilled to see alligators.
“They thought it was so cool,” she says. “This year we had 20-30 kids, and we took two airboat rides with about 12 per boat.”
Zoo Day and the Everglades airboat rides are held closer to the spring.
“As of right now, we are sticking with these events,” she says. “They are all evenly spaced throughout the year.”
Eikenberg loves to see how much fun the children have at the events.
“It’s amazing to see,” she says. “It makes my heart so full seeing them so happy. Most of them have never visited the zoo or have spent time in the Everglades.”
She previously started another club with her siblings called the All Things Sports Club. They collaborated with Touching Miami with Love.
“We would go down to Homestead and play various sports with the kids,” she says. “My travel soccer team went down to Homestead one year. We played sports with the kids and did activities. We even had Santa Claus join us for Christmas. My coach joined us and dressed up as Santa.”
Eikenberg plays varsity soccer and tennis at Westminster. Until recently, she also played for the Palm Beach Predators Club Soccer Team.
She is ranked third or fourth seed on the Westminster tennis team.
Her potential career path is aligned towards medical school where Eikenberg is looking to become a pediatrician.
At Westminster Christian, Eikenberg is a member of HOSA, secretary of the National Honor Society, and a member of Mu Alpha Theta, the National Science Honor Society, the National English Honor Society, the World Language Honor Society, and the Tri-M Honor Society. She is in the AP Capstone Diploma Program, and she is an Emerald Scholar.
This summer she was accepted to participate as a Summer Scholar in the competitive, three-week internship at the Cleveland Clinic.
“I experienced eight rotations throughout the hospital,” she says.
The rotations included the ER and surgery. She says it was a memorable experience being able to shadow doctors and nurses.
“Prior to this summer, I had never witnessed a surgery,” she says.
Eikenberg wants to go out of state for college and is applying to schools in the south and mid-Atlantic areas. She plans to major in Biology through the pre-Med track.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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