Gainesville CARES- S

Since December, the UNICEF club at my school has been involved in co-hosting a 5K, called the Red Ribbon Run, with the Gainesville Pride Community Center to raise money for Gainesville CARES, a new non-profit that is dedicated to providing resources to people with AIDS/HIV and to prevent its spread in the area.

The process has been quite frustrating, mostly because I find it hard to fit the meetings in to my schedule since they have to be convenient for the working adults that are helping out as well as the high school students. At first it was very overwhelming, because the supervisor was very intense and the only people on board were him and about 5 of us kids. But as time went on we got more people involved that did lots of helpful work. In general, I helped with publicizing the event and getting word out to people that work with my mom's non-profit because she works with people with HIV/AIDS in the community as well. We went through a long process of selecting a logo, finding an adequate date, trying to organize the registration program and getting enough volunteers. I tried to get some UF organizations, such as ONE and a few fraternities and sororities, to become involved when I volunteered at the annual AIDS Awareness Night on World AIDS Day, December 1 (2 hours). The people were very interested at the time, but unfortunately as time went on they started dropping out because the schedule issues were just too difficult to deal with.
Up to now I've attended 11 meetings to plan and organize the 5K, and I have learned that it is much more difficult and complex than I expected (11 hours). I've also done some extra work that includes outreach, looking for sponsors, and mapping the event on mapmyrun.com (2 hours). There is a month left until the Red Ribbon Run, and finally things are starting to fall together after a shaky beginning!
Meeting dates (up to March 22, 2011):
December 2, 16
January 11, 18
February 1, 15, 24
March 17, 22

Conferencia- C

In addition to French, I am taking Spanish III this year. I want to perfect my grammar and communication skills in what used to be my first language, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to try out for Conferencia. I auditioned in December and was lucky enough to make the team. I was selected to memorize a poem, called La Marioneta de Gabo, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and to do extemporaneous speech in Spanish. This experience was probably one of the best all year! I got a perfect score on both events, and our team won first place in our division. This was the first time that I ever competed in anything like this, involving speaking or performing in front of judges. It really helped me become more confident in speaking Spanish and working under pressure. The teammates and coaches, Señor Avendaño, Srta Haedo, and Sra Zelaya, were a huge help. I met with Srta Haedo on 8 different occasions from January to March to practice my poem (2 hours), and practiced my extemporaneous speaking with my father and Sra Zelaya (2 hours). This doesn't include memorization time, though! I had to spend at least ten minutes each night for a while to memorize the poem and write all of my outlines for the speeches (4 hours). This was definitely one of the best projects I have been involved in during high school! Next year I am going to try to do declamation in Congrès, the French counterpart of the Conferencia competition.

Nicaragua Trip- C

In the future, I would love to find a career in anything that involves public health, international relations, or environmental sciences. When I had the idea of taking some friends down to Nicaragua in the summer of 2011, I realized that this could be a dream come true; I could try out each aspect of my career prospects to see if I liked them. I decided to organize this trip through the San Lucas Foundation because my uncle, Francisco Moraga, and aunt, Reyna Sanchez, run the Nicaragua branch and had told me about other service brigades' great experiences working with the community. So, I now serve as the bilingual liaison between the Nicaraguan organization and the American students and chaperone.
The goal of this trip is to combine all aspects of the CAS curriculum, and all three parts of my interests, in order to get as much possible out of this. I started the planning in November by researching possibilities for ecotourism, which would serve as our Active hours, and to incorporate my interest of environmental sciences (2 hours). I found out about a sea turtle preserve about two hours from the town we would be staying in called Chacocente. We will spend a night there with the park rangers to help ward off poachers, hike in the forest, and guide the turtle hatchlings to the water. We will be learning about the local fauna and about ways to involve the local communities in preventing the depletion of an endangered species that they used to depend on as a food and income source. We'll be visiting other rainforest preserves and hiking up a volcano, called Mombacho, as well. The last Active aspect will be volunteering at a kids' sports camp for two days, where we will also bring new equipment for everyone to use. Alex Alty, one of the students going to Nicaragua, has already graciously asked his soccer team to start gathering cleats, soccer balls, uniforms, and anything else that can be used by the Foundation's sport's camp to give children an alternative to street life.
I visited my family in Nicaragua over winter break and had the chance to do some planning and conferring with the organization, plus to visit the location that we would be doing our Service aspect of the project at (7 hours). The program is called the Banco de Tierra and is basically a project trying to get 13 families to become economically independent by harvesting crops, cooperating with neighbors, being environmentally friendly, promoting community health, and maintaining family values on about 100 acres of land that were purchased by the San Lucas Foundation. The families' goal is to become independent, but they need money and help to build homes, reforest some of the land back to native flora, and build latrines in environmentally viable locations.

Some of the families have already planted crops, but are still not able to manage them at a subsistence level because they have no way of getting to their land, which they want to eventually pay off (without interest) to the San Lucas Foundation, which is 40 minutes away from their current residence. That's why they need our help! Each student involved is requires to fundraise $200, which is enough for zinc roofing for a family of 6.

This is a picture of part of the area of land that the families will maintain and live from. One third of each family's land must be kept in its original state to preserve the local flora and fauna, but it may be used to collect wild fruit or food sources as long as it agrees with the rules of conservation.

Gilberto Morales, the current caretaker of the land, is working with the Foundation to develop a cheaper way to use cow dung, which excretes methane, for cooking and heating. He has not graduated from any college-type education, despite being over 40 years old, but he serves as an economist, naturalist, farmer, community leader, spokesperson, volunteer and father. This incredible man is one of the people waiting for a home, and he will most likely be our guide for this part of the trip.

The group of students, which includes Alex Alty, Jesse Smith-Appelson, Jon Yoo and Nick Vander Meer, has met twice at school. I was in charge of the first parent meeting at my house, and I held another meeting which everyone, including the chaperone, Heather Christian, attended to choose the project we'd be working on and to solidify the dates (total of 5 hours).

So far, I have considered most of my work as Creative hours, because it has generally consisted of planning, and me researching and formulating new ideas for how to make this project as successful as possible. However, the meetings were more service-oriented, as they were based on educating and fundraising for the Foundation.

CAS Long Term: CBOB- S

In May of 2010, the UNICEF Club at my high school recommended a workshop at UF that dealt with Internally Displaced Persons in Colombia and Uganda. The organization that ran the presentation and activities was Children Beyond Our Borders, a non-profit that started in Gainesville a few years ago. The experience was great for me, especially since I have a huge interest in working with non-profits, using language skills to interact with people abroad, and global education. Later, in August, I found out that a few seniors decided to start a chapter of CBOB at our school, and of course I decided to become involved. I became 'project manager' and decided to use this as my long-term project for CAS when I was offered the position of president-in-training for the 2011-2012 school year.
The point of this club is to educate, or spread the word, about kids in primarily Colombia that have little or limited access to education because of their situation of being displaced by the Civil War-like conflicts going on there. Also, fundraising is a big activity- obviously if we want to have a scholarship fund, buy supplies, and build schools, we'll need money! We raise money mostly through bake sales, potlucks and getting sponsors. Up to now, I've made brownies three times (total of 3 hours), and had fun experimenting with arepas, a typical Colombian food, for a potluck (2 hours). Our meetings, held about every third Tuesday (unfortunately pretty inconsistently because of the senior schedule conflicts) at school are mostly updates on what we're raising money for, and we've had six at B-lunch (total of 3 hours). Since I'm an officer, I've also been to three meetings at the regional CBOB office (total of 5 hours). I've also learned that I can't depend on fellow officers to get things done, however. I feel as though this has been my busiest year, but the seniors seem especially distracted. A month ago, I made a list of things I want to get done before this school year is over, and the other officers were amazed that I actually took time to do it. That was disappointing- the fact that they weren't willing to work towards this important project- but also helped me look forward to next year when I will be the one initiating activities instead of waiting for others to get things done. More to come on the progress of our CBOB chapter!

Here is the list of what we are currently working on:
-T-Shirt fundraiser designs
-New Horizons E-tutoring kids in Medellin, Colombia
-Getting sponsors for raffles and awareness campaigns
-Save the World Day in cooperation with Eastside's other service clubs (hopefully April 15-17)
-I Am CBOB Scholarship Fund (it costs about $250 for one year of college tuition in Colombia, and we want to raise enough for at least enough for two by the end of this year.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TngUpxOgCqY link to Jose's story, one of the young men  we're raising money for

Zumba- A

My Spanish teacher suggested going to a zumba class for fun. I tried it out with some of my friends, and we assumed that it would be embarrassing and awkward. As it turns out, zumba is both of those things, but they also play my favorite music- and the best part is that you burn 600 calories per hour. I've gone to 4 zumba classes at the GHFC and love going to relieve stress and vary my exercise (4 hours).