Isabella Lagarto

DIGITAL AND INTERACTIVE MEDIA: Lorenzo Castillo-Rios

Miami Palmetto Senior High senior Lorenzo Castillo-Rios may be best recognized for the photography and videography he does around the school. He is the co-owner of a content creation company, AL Media Co., and is a part of MPSH’s Television Production team as Director of Photography, helping to air the school’s announcements every morning. 

Castillo’s service project, the reason for his nomination to the 2023-2024 Silver Knights, is called Volunteering Miami. This is a platform that was created to connect not only students but anyone wishing to volunteer within their community to recruiting organizations. During the past year-and-a-half, they have been able to connect over approximately 3,000 volunteers in the Miami community. 

Castillo and his service project have an interesting start to their story. Castillo was not the founder of the organization but made it into what it is today. 

“I walked into a room late for Farkas’ class freshman year, and there was this random-seeming kid in there giving a presentation on his website. That website was the original Volunteering Miami. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to get involved,’ so I reached out to him and we started working together,” Castillo said. 

Toward the end of Castillo’s sophomore year, he took over Volunteering Miami as the Chief Executive Officer and turned it into the 501(c)(3) non-profit it is now. Now, in Miami alone, the website offers about 100 different volunteering opportunities for students ranging from cultural, educational and environmental opportunities. 

Through the years, Volunteering Miami has extended its reach to other cities throughout Florida.

“There actually is now a Volunteering Orlando, Volunteering Lake County and a few other cities in the works right now as we speak,” Castillo said. 

The original Volunteering Miami helps each branch and assists in the creation of their websites. Each site has between five to 10 staff operating and running them. 

“We sponsor and pay for everything,” Castillo said. 

Volunteering Miami puts on events for students, the biggest one being their volunteer fairs. 

“There’s actually several universities down here that have now started their own volunteer fairs based on the success of ours, so it has been great,” Castillo said.

Castillo is also proud of the fact that Volunteering Miami opens itself up to students wanting to help create their own projects. This is a new branch within the organization where students can come up with a proposal and get the resources and assistance they need to set up. 

“… Any student with an idea writes us a proposal, we make it easy with the template and everything and then tell me what you need, whether it’s funding, a venue, a platform or website or even just support. We have yet to say no…” Castillo said.

Volunteering Miami has been able to set up projects from beach clean-ups to a mission trip to El Salvador. The first Collaborative Cleanup was hosted on April 8 at Matheson Hammock Park. It was in an attempt to create a collaborative effort between numerous environmental organizations including Clean Aqua, Turtle Team, Pick It Up Mission, Earth SOS Miami, Uplift Operation and Lavender Ribbon Initiative. In the end, about 100 volunteers attended. Dancers Dressing Dancers, a project that allows younger dancers to pursue their passions without the high cost, was able to complete its first mission trip to El Salvador this past summer. Volunteering Miami in collaboration with DDD are now working towards their next trip in 2024, working with other dance studios in developing countries. 

DRAMA: Sofia Sierra

Silver Knight nominee for Drama and Miami Palmetto Senior High senior Sofia Sierra’s service project, Bleeding Hearts Across America, provides feminine hygiene products to women in low-income communities and circumstances. As Vice President of the nonprofit student-run organization, Sierra helps direct drives and raise money, while also spreading awareness around the difficulties women who do not have access to the necessary hygiene products may face. Sierra says her inspiration came from another organization on campus: Women Of Tomorrow. 

“Women Of Tomorrow did a drive for feminine hygiene products, but I suddenly came to the realization that an annual drive would not be enough to provide for women’s needs. Thus, Condoleezza and I decided to start our own non-profit specifically targeting low-income women in nearby communities,” Sierra said.

Sierra started BHAA alongside senior Condoleezza Alexis, whom Sierra considers her best friend. 

“I’m the vice president and Condoleezza is the founder. We both collaborated, it was a joint effort to engineer this non-profit and really see it built from the ground up,” Sierra said. “It was hard, we had to first establish ourselves as a non-profit and that comes with a lot of paperwork and work just getting the board and making sure we have enough people to sustain this non-profit organization. It also comes along with the registration fee to be an official nonprofit, which is around three hundred dollars, plus the cost to just do drives and stuff. It’s a lot and we wanted to make sure we had all of the funds and the means we needed before that. So that really just took a lot of fundraising and a lot of promoting.”

Sierra has taken acting classes at MPSH for four years and has competed at events for the Drama Department for three. Sierra credits MPSH drama teacher Robin Barson with allowing her to compete for the school, and for supporting her through the years. Sierra says drama has helped her communicate more effectively with others, especially when language acted as a barrier to expression for her.

“I started drama because for the longest time, I wasn’t able to communicate with others because my first language is Spanish so it was really hard for me to communicate with others as a child, and growing up English was one of my worst subjects. So, I really worked hard to communicate with other people and that started by dancing competitively for 10 to 12 years and eventually evolved into singing because I wanted to know the language more, and I felt like through music and dance and the fine arts I could really be able to touch that,” Sierra said.

Sierra believes her participation in drama and the communication skills she has learned through that experience have helped her in her service project. 

“Drama has always been a part of communication, and I feel like today the lack of communication revolving around feminine hygiene products and just feminine menstruation in general, just natural bodily functions, lacks in education, and we need to communicate with each other. I feel like being a part of drama and being able to speak to you today, just being able to connect with others is primarily the main focus of the connection between BHAA and drama,” Sierra said.