Palmetto High School senior Taryn d’Adesky constantly looks for ways that she can help the people of Haiti.
After the 2010 earthquake, d’Adesky, along with her family and friends, collected thousands of dollars and sent it survivors in Port au Prince. They also collected cases of bottled water and shipped them to the island nation during the first two weeks after the disaster.
“Through our school, we started a collection,” d’Adesky says. “My family started a non-profit called Help for Haiti. The school helped collect the bottled water and for every case donated by a student, they were given an hour of community service time.”
D’Adesky’s group sent three shipping containers full of cases of bottled water, all of it from the donations from Westminster students and faculty, the school she was attending at the time. In total, they sent six containers, including the bottled water collected by all family members.
“That was our first project; we also made tee shirts and bracelets that we sold for Haiti relief,” d’Adesky says. “Westminster organized a walk for the mission trip to Nicaragua and we had a tent there. We also sold them at soccer games. We gave $2,000 to Medishare and $1,000 to Food for the Poor. Both organizations benefitted Haiti.”
Last summer, d’Adesky and her group collected clothing and apparel, and then she personally flew to Haiti with the shipment to distribute the goods to needy people.
“Our dad thought it would be a good experience,” she says. “And I did, too.”
Now, d’Adesky and her group organize a project each summer to aid Haiti, and this year they found a new way to help.
“My parents started a company called CAD-MED to sell medical supplies to South America and the Caribbean,” she says. “This past summer, I was given the job of taking inventory of the arriving merchandise and I found that sometimes, when the shipments arrive from the manufacturers or distributors, the boxes are damaged. I asked my dad if I could donate the damaged stuff to the UM Medishare Haiti program rather than spend the money to return it and he agreed.”
D’Adesky says the damaged supplies were still good, but not in saleable condition and included such things as anti-bacterials, scrubbers, monitors and surgery tools. She says they were able to donate more than $13,000 worth of medical supplies to Medishare Haiti.
While all those activities count toward her community service, that’s not all d’Adesky does to help the community. She also has been a camp counselor and she has coached girls’ soccer in the fall for the last two years. She also has volunteered with the Maya Macey Foundation.
When she’s not busy helping the people of Haiti, d’Adesky plays soccer. She played on the Westminster Christian team during her freshman year and is now playing for Palmetto High School after transferring. She’s a terrific soccer player and made the All-Dade first team in her freshman year and second team All Dade at Palmetto in her junior year. She says this year’s team should be pretty good and even though they lost four seniors from last year’s team, the new players should be good.
D’Adesky also plays club soccer and hopes the high visibility of the club sport will help her find a soccer scholarship. She is interested in attending the University of Miami, American University or the Florida Institute of Technology.
“I want to major in communications,” she says. “I really like writing, so maybe I’ll be a journalist, a reporter for a sports channel like ESPN.”
At Palmetto, d’Adesky is involved with the Pink Ribbon Club, the HIV Awareness Club and the new organization, No Place for Hate.
By Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
