Dream in Green Volunteers

On March 15th I attended the event “Design & Build Event” hosted by Dream in Green, which is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower individuals to create solutions to solve the impacts of climate change and other environmental problems. I learned about this event because I have been in contact with Barbara Martinez-Guerrero, who is always sending me updates about upcoming events where they might need volunteers. Today’s event was a design competition between private high schools. Each school presented their green design to all the judges and afterwards the judges decided who were the winners and honorable mentions.
I arrived at the event around 9:30am, and I was quickly greeted by Barbara. I was assigned momentarily to assist at the front desk to welcome any students and parents to the competition, and after the students arrived, I notified the staff to make sure they crossed their names from the attendance list. Approximately at 10am the competition started. We listened to Commissioner Higgins from District 5, and she gave a speech on the importance of green architecture to have a better sustainable and reliable community in the future. During her speech, I made sure to take a lot of pictures of her and the audience because they were later going to be published on Dream in Green’s Instagram. After she delivered her speech, the judges walked around the student’s models and asked them about the process of creation, why they selected that design, how long it took them to build it, etc. The judging of the models took around two hours because there were around 15 schools and only five judges. During that time, I took pictures of all the students with their models, of the judges asking the students questions, and of the parents. I also signed parents up for the Dream in Green newsletter to make sure they know of the opportunities their kids can participate in and inform people who stopped near the entrance of what we were doing here and Dream in Green’s mission.
After all the judges stopped at all the tables the time to decide was nearing. David and I grabbed around six chairs and placed them around a water fountain, so the judges could sit and vote in private. This took around 25 minutes. During that time, we were assigned to distribute a bag to all the participants. After that the winners were announced and the event finished. However, before I left, I made sure to pack all the materials from Dream in Green, like flyers, food, and shirts, clean all the tables that were used, and transport all the materials to the vans.
Participating in this event was an incredible experience. I really enjoyed seeing the imagination of the participants and how they implemented it on their models. As an Environmental Science major, this type of competition makes me feel happy because I realize that more people realize the importance of taking care of the environment and how we can adopt new strategies to create a greener future. I am very excited to volunteer in more events with Dream in Green in the future!

On December 4th, 2024, I attended a community forum in Miami Gardens. When I arrived, I sat down and listened to the presentations, which were about green spaces in the city of Miami Gardens and heat. After the presentations, representatives from various organizations rotated between the four tables. The objective of this activity was to hear firsthand what the citizens had to say about green spaces and whether they had experienced heat exhaustion. I took a lot of pictures and tried to record some videos.
After the rotations, we began the last activity, which was to collect the surveys given out at the start of the forum and exchange them for a native tree. Shortly after, I started cleaning and organizing the tables and helped pack everything up.
This was my first time attending a volunteer activity with Dream in Green, and I really liked it. I hope that in the future I can attend more forums and help with anything they might need.

Barbara Martinez-Guerrero  2 years ago Thank you so much Angeline for your help. We are truly grateful for your time and insights.