‘I'm super honored': 2025 Silver Knight Awards handed out to high achieving graduates
One student created a Special Olympics soccer and football team at his high school.
Another student created an organization that gives menstrual pads to girls in homeless shelters and schools in Jamaica after learning that a lack of access to sanitary products was keeping girls from going to school.
And another student raised money to build clean water wells in an African country where families walk miles to get clean drinking water.
Read more: Meet the 2025 Silver Knight Award winners
At this year's Miami Herald Silver Knight Awards, which recognizes high school seniors for service projects, 15 students from Miami-Dade and Monroe counties and 15 from Broward County went home smiling Wednesday night with $2,000 scholarship from the Herald Charities Foundation, 25,000 American Advantage miles, good for a round-trip ticket in the U.S., and a Silver Knight statue.
The 67th annual Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald Silver Knight Award ceremony, coined the 'Oscars for High Schoolers in Miami,' took place at the James L. Knight Center in downtown Miami. The Silver Knight Awards program was instituted at The Miami Herald in 1959 by John S. Knight, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former publisher of The Miami Herald, founder and editor emeritus of Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
This year's nominees wore their finest, and a packed audience of parents, student advisors, and community members cheered when their students' names were called.
Many of the male students wore perfectly polished shoes, suit jackets and ties, and girls wore dresses with heels as they took the stage, accompanied by the North Broward High School jazz band.
Each of the 15 categories' winner is chosen by a panel of judges made up of community leaders in each respective field.
The categories include art, athletics, business, digital media, drama, English, general scholarship, journalism, mathematics, music, science, social science, speech, vocational tech, and world languages.
At the event, students who received 'honorable mentions' also took the stage and went home with a $500 scholarship and a plaque.
All winners were also adorned with the coveted ribbon that winners get to wear around their neck during their high school graduation.
One student at today's event is the second in her family to be nominated. Gilliane McLaughlin, 18, said that when she told her mom she was nominated this year, she found out that her mom had also been nominated as a high school senior.
McLaughlin was nominated for her work selling rosaries at her Catholic church to raise money for its expansion.
Paulette Martinez, who won the Silver Knight for General Scholarship in Miami-Dade was crying as she was handed her award on the stage. She was in shock.
'It wasn't even something I was thinking of,' said Martinez, a student at Miami Arts Studio 6-12 at Zelda Glazer, who will attend Princeton next year.
She said she calculated she only had a two percent chance of winning, and so she did not even invite her mom to the ceremony. But she called her mom backstage to give her the news, and more importantly, to get her social security number so she could get her check.
In Miami-Dade, 683 students were nominated from 93 schools across Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. There were 252 nominees from Broward, coming from 33 different schools.
Winners included Amelia McKay, a senior at South Miami Senior High who won Miami-Dade's art category for her work on climate awareness and Amy Zhou from the School for Advanced Studies at Miami Dade College Wolfson campus for her work on an after-school tutoring program.
Roberto Carmona, from Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High, originally from Cuba, created an organization to lobby for students who are learning English to have more subtitles in school.
Jonah Feldman, a student from Cypress Bay High School in Broward, raised money to help build clean water wells in rural Eswatini, an African country where families walk miles to get clean drinking water, often over rough terrain. He won the Silver Knight in the journalism category.
'Wow, I didn't expect that at all, I can't even describe it,' he told the Herald. 'I am super excited to be recognized and I am happy because now the whole auditorium knows about the project.'
He and Thirst Project members raised the funds by telling the story of the villagers at various events. The new wells will mean women and children don't have to lug 40-pound jugs to get water, freeing them up to work and attend school.
Before and after the event, proud parents were snapping photos and offering hugs to their soon-to-be graduated seniors.
Leading up to the event, most students were nervous but excited. Some, like Emma Rubinstein and Harlee Ross, both nominees in the Music and Dance category, made friends while waiting for the event to begin. Turns out, both Rubinstein and Ross will attend the University of Miami next year. They plan to study engineering and legal studies, respectively.
Ross got dressed up for tonight's award ceremony alongside the 14 other nominees from North Broward High School in the gym locker room, as she was at school all day taking her International Baccalaureate or 'IB' exam.
'I am just excited to be here and grateful to be selected by my school,' said Ross.
Gabriella Amore, who will attend Princeton next year, said she felt amazing after learning she won the drama category for Broward for her service project to help animals. Amore is also the founding member of one of the first girls troops in Boy Scouts of America.
'I'm super honored, it's just amazing,' she said.
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