SOCIAL SCIENCE: Paul Sasso
Senior and Social Science Silver Knight Nominee Paul Sasso has dedicated his high school career to bringing people together. Starting in eighth grade, Sasso has been the founder and director of Puentes, a program dedicated to bridging people from different upbringings together.
It all started when his eighth grade English teacher, Graciela Figueras, connected him with a student named Pierre, who came from a less fortunate background in Goulds. Sasso was able to connect with him by finding things each of them had in common, leading Sasso to come up with the idea to create Puentes.
“We create bridges through different communities and demographics of people. I hope that everyone can celebrate each other’s differences and find a common ground today. We seem to be too divided, and I think we need to realize that we’re more alike than we realize,” Sasso said.
Paul believes the beauty of this project is its lack of a specific audience. Rather, Puentes is centered around connecting groups that are separated by cultural, socioeconomic and even geographic barriers, bringing them together by highlighting similarities between each group.
“The most surprising result is how easy it is to bring people together. Something that we do at the program is called a domino night, where we use a conversation starter. When we’re doing domino nights, we’re not really there to play dominoes, but to get to know the people that are sitting at the table around us,” Sasso said. “By putting people of different backgrounds in a room together, with music, dominoes and food, differences start to melt away, and getting to know each other is pretty much the main goal of what we’re doing.”
Sasso plans to bring this program with him to college, as Puentes’ structure can be easily replicated.
“I have a board that will take over. I have created the club at Palmetto Elementary, Palmetto Middle and Palmetto High School, so that all of those members can really get into what we’re trying to do and come through the different schools and continue to participate, lead and make a difference,” Sasso said. “I’m also planning on bringing Puentes or a similarly structured group to whatever university or community I become a part of in the future.”
Sasso plans on carrying the fundamentals that he has created here in Miami to the communities he encounters in his postsecondary education, to help more groups unite.
SPEECH: O’Neill Cooper
Miami Palmetto Senior High senior and Speech Silver Knight nominee O’Neill Cooper dedicates himself to changing the world one green roof at a time. His dedication and passion for making an impact on climate change inspired him to start the Green Roof Initiative, a project in which Cooper contributes to benefiting urban environments as a whole. With his project, Cooper spreads knowledge about green roofs through lectures for organizations around South Florida and offers solutions that can help benefit the environment, so that others can join his mission.
“I hope [my project] raises awareness among the general population, because for any policy, you need awareness about the solution in order to push that policy through,” Cooper said. “I hope it really pushes green roofs forward through green policies. I mean, in Miami-Dade County alone, we’ve had massive leaps in policy for green roofs.”
Cooper’s project is not a short-term mission, and he plans for it to have an impact for generations to come.
“I would like to expand [the Green Roof Initiative] out to get a wider reach, to raise more awareness, hopefully gain a lot more traction on social media and try to create lectures on a much more regular basis, instead of just going to specific organizations and lecturing for those organizations,” Cooper said.
The Green Roof Initiative targets all audiences, but is mainly focused on reaching homeowners and the middle-aged, as the project discusses their homes and their families’ future.
Once a main audience is gathered, Cooper makes short films and videos to expand others’ knowledge of the topic. Typically, his videos contain 60 to 90-second clip reels reflecting on how the Green Roof Initiative has benefited the community.
“We choose specific topics because we touch on a lot of different things, like the environmental benefits, like the benefits to urban environments as a whole,” Cooper said. “But for example, the lecture we’re doing right now is on how greeners can save you money, and we choose specific topics that are more relevant to the people we’re lecturing to.”
Lectures are one of the most impactful ways Cooper has been able to raise awareness and share his project. Numerous topics, from environmental benefits to urban environments as a whole, capture the audience’s attention and provide them with a better understanding of green roofs and their importance in one’s community.
Cooper began this project after realizing, to his surprise, that people were not as environmentally educated as he initially thought.
“I began to understand that a lot of people don’t know, but you just don’t understand the extent of it,” Cooper said.
Cooper believes most people who attended his lectures were unaware of what a green roof was prior to their session.
“When we did our first study on the effects of social media on people’s perception of green roofs, most of our responses when we asked, ‘What is the green roof?’ were either ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘your roof painted green,’ and the green roof is not your roof painted green,” Cooper said.
Cooper hopes to bring this project to his college town and expand his efforts into his adulthood.
