Miami Palmetto High School senior Sophia Lambert is working on completing her Girl Scout Gold Award.
“I’m creating a college information session for the teens at Lotus House,” she says. “They usually have activities for the younger kids so that’s why my program focuses on teenagers.”
Her project was shaped by the realization that everyone needs help when going through the college application process.
“I wanted to make sure these kids have resources that could help them, too,” she says.
The first of the informational sessions was scheduled for Oct. 1. There will be another one scheduled in February and a third one at the end of the school year.
Because it’s a Gold Award, the project has to be sustainable. She’s making arrangements for the informational sessions to continue after she’s gone on to college.
“It’s going to continue with the college counselor from International College Counselors paired with the Lotus House,” she says.
The sessions will cover different areas including applying scholarships as well as applying for college.
Lambert says while the teens living at the Lotus House are enrolled in school and even though the schools they attend should help them in the college process, she wants the sessions to answer any questions they might have about the process.
There will be help for those teens who don’t feel college is the right choice for them.
“One of our information sessions will be options outside of college,” she says. “Vocational schools and training – options like that.”
She’s been planning her Gold Project since the end of last year. After the first session, she’ll be able to write up a report and present it to the Girl Scout Council.
Girl Scouts is just one of Lambert’s volunteer activities. She’s also president of the Temple Judea Youth group, JTY.
“I’ve been involved since I was in kindergarten in the youth programs,” she says.
The youth group does both fun activities and more serious programs for Jewish teen development.
“It gets kids involved in Judaism in a fun way,” she says. “It’s a nice sense of community.”
Through the youth group, she has participated as a counselor at Camp Jenny, the sleep-away camp for underprivileged Atlanta area children.
She’s been moved up the ranks from staff-in-training to assistant counselor and head counselor. As head counselor she’s in charge of the cabin and develops cabin programming.
Through NFTY she went to Israel for four weeks the summer before her junior year. There she hiked in the desert and traveled the country. For the program’s choice week, she chose to hike from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediterranean Sea.
“My hiking experiences showed me I can do anything,” she says. “I was not a nature person.
It was something so different that I’ve never experience before. It was so cool.”
At Palmetto, Lambert is the head of special events for student council. Last year she chaired the student involvement committee.
She’s also a member of Thespians. She cast as part of the ensemble in the show, The Drowsy Chaperone.
“We’ve been doing that for two years,” she says. “We took it to state competition and performed it in front of almost 3,000 people.”
In the upcoming performance of Merrily We Roll Along, she will be playing Dory.
Although it’s her first year on the yearbook, her leadership work in several organizations has given her design experience so she was named the Academics and Index Editor.
She’s also a member of Students Demand Action, the student run organization that advocates for common sense gun laws.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
