Girl Scouts of Florida honor Gold, Silver Award recipients from Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest
The Girl Scouts of Tropical Florida (GSTF) recently honored its 2020 Gold and Silver Award recipients from Palmetto Bay and Pinecrest.
Tatum Rivera, Sarah Lannon, Olivia Solomon, Isabella del Granado, Ashley Thompson, Isabel Latorre, and Kathy Labiste were each recognized by Chelsea Wilkerson, CEO of GSTF, who personally delivered pins to each of the winners instead of hosting a High Awards Ceremony due to COVID-19 restrictions. The winning students created projects that focused on STEM, education, agriculture, medicine, and more on a local, national, and global level.
NEW WORLD SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
New World School of the Arts’ Alumni Foundation recently awarded two $2,500 Inspiration Grants to alumni Harmony Jackson, founder of Quar.Intensive, and Randi Berry, executive director of The Indie Theater Fund in New York. With the grants, both Jackson and Berry will be able to focus on critical arts and theater programming for their communities.
The Inspiration Grant was created to alleviate the challenges that the arts community faces, including a lack of funding.
Jackson created Quar.Intensive to “foster a community of movement artists who are committed to maintaining a high level of technique and connection,” she said. The program has been self-funded from the beginning, but now she will use this grant to cover general program expenses, as well as compensate nine instructors who are also alumni of New World School of the Arts.
As executive director of The Indie Theater Fund in New York, Berry noted that the theater shifted its focus to the survival and recovery of small, independent theaters in New York. “This award will enable us to provide additional programming and overall support for this community,” she said.
“The Alumni Foundation was honored to assist with funding these important and timely efforts by NWSA alums; our fifth and sixth such grant since the Foundation’s inception,” said Elizabeth Gainer, chair of the foundation’s grant committee. “We are especially pleased to be supporting these projects, which are focused on supporting our arts communities in these harrowing times.”
PALMER TRINITY SCHOOL
Palmer Trinity School’s Science, Technology, Engineering, Environment, Entrepreneurship, and Math Club president and founder, Benjamin Arnold, was a speaker at the 2020 Nation of Makers Conference in Oregon earlier this month. He was invited as a representative of the winning team, which competed in Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and NASA’s Growing Beyond Earth Maker Contest.
During the conference, Benjamin discussed the team’s winning design of an optimal plant box that could be used to successfully grow the ‘Outredgeous’ variety of red romaine lettuce in a microgravity environment.
“We are extremely proud of what this talented and hard-working group has accomplished and of Benjamin for representing our school on such an important platform such as Makers, and creating solutions that have a global impact,” said Patrick Roberts, head of school.
In addition to Benjamin, Palmer Trinity students and STEEEM members Blake Cobo, Alex Fumagalli, Nikolas Gianulis, Patrick Grattan, Nicholas Hernandez, Christopher Oeltjen, Carlos Penzini, Tatiana Multach, Jack Sulkes, and John Lukas Turner-Smith also attended the virtual conference.
