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Miami Palmetto High incoming senior Samantha Berlan has a passion for community service. She’s been a Girl Scout since first grade and scouting helped cultivate her interest in helping others.
She got an early start in high school, developing the Savings for Students project, a financial literacy program to help students keep from making mistakes that will cause them to have bad credit.
“It’s about credit cards, loans, and the difference between buying and leasing a car,” she says. “I started this in ninth grade. I first collected 80-100 surveys on basic financial literacy. I wanted to get a basic understanding of what most people knew at that point.”
She compiled the results of the survey and her sophomore year she used that information to bring in presenters to speak to the graduating seniors.
The presenters included her mom, who is a former teacher at Palmetto but now works as Lead Lender Relations Specialist for the Small Business Administration. Berlan realized as she watched her mom work how little most people know about credit and finances. After watching her sister apply for student loans, Berlan decided she could put together a community service project that could teach students about the issues that come up when people are applying for loans, including student loans.
She worked with the Palmetto administration on the program. They sent the presenters to the senior classrooms for 15-30 minute presentations. This June, the program was held on Zoom and sent to the senior classes.
The Savings for Students program is the centerpiece of her Girl Scout Gold Award project.
She’ll also use the project in her Silver Knight application.
Berlan is involved in Achieve Miami at Caribbean Elementary. She started in the summer program and moved on to become a Big Buddy.
“It wasn’t until this year that Achieve really impacted my life,” she says. “These three little girls are best friends. They are the reason I’d wake up ecstatic on a Saturday morning. It’s such a rewarding feeling that you have an active role in improving their reading level and be a friend and mentor to them.”
The three girls would work with Berlan and her friend. Normally it’s a one-on-one relationship but because of the bond, the director gave them permission to work two-on-three.
Berlan is on the Achieve Miami Junior Board. Because of the coronavirus, the program was put on hold when the school system shut down and remains on hold.
Until the coronavirus caused the schools to close, Berlan played on the Palmetto lacrosse team. She began playing her freshman year.
“I completely fell head over heels for the sport,” she says.
She loved it so much she sought out a club team and chose the South Florida Chaos based in Broward.
Her commitment to lacrosse was rewarded with being named team captain and she earned the Scholar Athlete Award. She hopes to play in college. However, the coronavirus has made recruiting much more difficult.
Other extracurricular activities include being Student Council secretary (junior and senior years), vice president of Key Club and English Honor Society treasurer.
She earned the Panther of Distinction Award. She was hoping to attend the summer seminar at the U.S. Naval Academy but it was cancelled due to COVID-19.
In college, she plans to take STEM classes.
“Stem lets you go into any field,” she says. “I just don’t know where I want to apply it.”
Her application list includes Duke, the U.S. Naval Academy, Vanderbilt, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
