Gulfshore Life's Outstanding Student Volunteer

Daniel Guzman
Outstanding Student Volunteer—Collier County

Needy families often don’t have outlets to repay the mountains of philanthropic kindness cascading their way in Collier County. Or at least Daniel Guzman didn’t think he did.

“People have given my family so much,” the Immokalee High School senior says. “I didn’t have the money to pay 
them back.”

At first, he used the help as an added reason to study hard. He’s a straight-A student who gets up early, sometimes at 5 a.m., to bike to school to study before classes start. He also is an aspiring environmental engineer.

But when he heard about a tutoring program at the Guadalupe Center, the 17-year-old saw an opportunity to pay forward the generosity of others, and build on to his accomplished high school resume.

Now he spends five days a week after school helping elementary students learn math. He’s put in more than 250 hours of community service since the start of his junior year and plans on continuing this fall.

“It makes you feel good,” he says of the work. “I’ve been there. It was a struggle when I started school because I didn’t know English. I’m helping kids that are just like me.”

—Jonathan Foerster

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