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In late May, new Palmer Trinity School graduate Sydney Powell won the Silver Knight for Mathematics. Powell’s Silver Knight project was Kids Interacting Sharing Shirts (KISS). She collected school uniform polo shirts to be given to underprivileged students in Miami-Dade Public Schools.
“We are trying to do our next distributions in August,” she says. “A kind of a back-to-school drive. We have so many shirts now. Our entire house is covered in boxes that we want to get out.”
They have drop-off boxes at most of the private schools, including Westminster, Ransom Everglades, Palmer Trinity, and Gulliver.
The distributions are heartwarming. The shirts are lined up by sizes and colors and the children go through and pick their own shirts in the sizes and colors they want and need.
One of the distribution sites was Booker T. Washington High School. Elementary and middle school students generally get the shirts, but they can pick up shirts for older siblings.
She’s done 15-20 distributions. They have gone to Overtown for a lot of the distributions, but they recently went to a school in Coconut Grove.
“We try to go everywhere we can across Miami,” she says.
They collect old uniforms that the donors don’t know what to do with. They have outgrown the uniforms, or they are graduating. KISS volunteers wash the uniforms and put the Miami-Dade Public Schools logo over the previous logos and donate them to inner city schools. They have donated more than 10,000.
Powell became involved in the organization in middle school and took it over in middle school when the founders graduated.
They collect polo shirts but often also receive pants, skirts and shorts. Those clothes are sent to Nicaragua to be distributed there.
The Brochin Family started the program and passed it on to Powell. She is in negotiations as to who will take it over so it can continue when she moves on to the University of Virginia to study Cognitive Science and Economics.
“I keep saying you have to do the distributions when I’m back from college because that’s the best part,” she says.
Powell is not only a superstar in community service, she’s also a terrific athlete. She was named to the First Team All-Dade for lacrosse. She was the leading scorer in the county.
She also played golf. The team went to the State Championship Tournament twice and won the District Championships three times. She was Second Team Honorable Mention in golf.
She played soccer as well.
At Palmer Trinity, she was vice president of the National Honor Society, and president of Mu Alpha Theta.
She participated in the free tutoring offered by Mu Alpha Theta. She said the turnout wasn’t always up to par, so she conducted a survey. Students filled out a form asking what subjects they needed help in and what times they were available.
“So, the tutors could sign up whenever they were available,” she says. “The turnout grew exponentially.”
She was also the vice president of the Class of ’23 for seven years, a member of Spanish Honor Society, and Tri-M (she played viola in the orchestra).
Powell was a facilitator in Mosaic. She would go into classrooms and teach them about diversity.
“Twice a month, we have mosaic lessons,” she says. “We’d teach lessons about pretty much the issues that are facing the world. We teach everyone from sixth grade to seniors.”
She was also a peer counselor. She helped students who needed to talk to someone about problems but didn’t want to talk to an adult.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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