Images courtesy of Aleksia Afonso.
The question isn’t really why 14-year-old Aleksia Afonso decided to take on designing the Dovercourt Community League newsletter; it’s how she found the time.
It’s not even just the usual comings and goings of eighth grade that Aleksia is navigating. Sure, there’s homework, and karate, and swimming, and dancing with her Portuguese troupe, but plenty of teens these days like their extracurriculars.
Even the extra calendar she has to keep just for her volunteering activities is pretty full, though: there’s teaching karate, and of course swimming, and, oh yeah, fundraising for her church, and then of course her regular visits to the area seniors home, for chats and activities. So, then, once all that is done and dusted, she finds time at least once a month to put together a full list of events, activities and bulletins to help keep her neighbourhood informed. Because, why not?
Some of Aleksia’s work on the Dovercourt Dispatch.
“I just enjoy doing this kind of stuff, giving back,” Aleksia explains, proving that in addition to being indefatigable, she’s also got a gift for understatement. “It feels nice to know that people are noticing it, too, and maybe they’re learning a bit about what’s going on in their community, so they have a chance to give back, too.”
It’s not hard to see why Aleksia makes the connection between awareness and finding a way to give back: it’s how she got the job in the first place. A lifelong Dovercourt resident, she happened to pick up the Community League newsletter while looking to fill one of the very few gaps in her schedule. Rather than heading down to the hall, though, she thought she could maybe make the newsletter itself look a bit nicer. One very polite email to Dovercourt League President Laura Shewchuk later, and she had the job.
It’s a move that’s paid off well for both Aleksia and the community, as you can tell by the examples of her handiwork displayed here. While she’s had a chance to hone her design skills, they’ve helped draw more attention to both League events — and even earned Aleksia some well-deserved praise.
“We have a little section in the newsletter called community forum, where people can put in notes about people who have helped them out or done a nice thing for them,” Aleksia says. “And recently a lot of people have written in to say how much they liked my work, so that makes me really happy.”
Though she’s happy to get the chance to do something for her community, Aleksia admits that it’s not quite in design or even the news game that her interests lie. As you might expect, she’s a pretty smart cookie, and she hopes to translate her talents for math and biology, as well as her love of helping people, especially kids, into a career as a pediatrician down the line. But before she gets there, she did have something slightly more pressing on her mind.
“Do you have any other volunteer opportunities that I could try out?” she asked, very earnestly, at the end of our chat.
The EFCL’s volunteer opportunities tend to conflict with school days, unfortunately, but if you have a job that needs a pretty special teenager, drop us a line and we’ll put you in touch.
