Social reform. Social reform in its basic definition is the reshaping of laws to be more accepting and generally bring about change. For many decades, social reform has been a huge topic of discussion. Doral Academy has been tackling this topic for some years now. Since the formation of the Social Reform Club in 2020 during quarantine, they have been trying to inspire change throughout the school in any way that they can. With an unsuccessful year in 2020 due to school being online, the board restarted the club when we all came back to in-person school in 2021. The board of the Social Reform Club consists of their club sponsor Mr. Dearing and 8 students held positions. Their president is Elizabth Neira, vice president is Paola Baez, treasurer is Angely Barrera, secretary is Melany Gonzalez, historian is Victoria Estrada, event coordinator is Anthony Dominguez, leadership council leader is Emily Saez, and menstrual product leader is Zagiri Manzanares. Every board member has a specific topic that they mainly focus on, be it hispanic issues, women issues, etc. 

The Social Reform club’s most recent event was their human trafficking speaker event. They brought in the US State Attorney’s Human Trafficking Task Force and a human trafficking survivor in order to bring awareness about the topic of human trafficking. They discussed what human trafficking is, how to avoid it, what the signs are, and what to do if you see signs of it. Another big project that the Social Reform Club takes on is trying to provide menstrual products to all girls in the school by making them accessible in the bathrooms. They paired with the school’s National Honor Society in order to collect products in order to stock the bathrooms. They hope to be able to get all of these products into the girls bathrooms by 2023 or 2024. 

Social Reform wants its members to be able to make a change through acting and actually doing something that they feel will have an impact. Many people join this club for the sole purpose of wanting change or simply just to be educated on certain topics. School classes do not usually allow the discussion of any current issues because of their strict curriculum so this club allows students to get informed in school but outside of class. The monthly meetings of the Social Reform Club always revolve around  a certain topic of discussion. Past meetings have been focused on human rights, women’s rights, black history month, immigration, and many more. They also discuss history and how it shows up in current events while affecting our day to day lives. They make sure to discuss the history of social reform and rights issues so we are able to have perspective on why something happened before and what’s happening now because of it. Their secretary, Angely Barrera, said it best, “Knowledge is honestly power… and if you have the knowledge you can bring about change whenever you want.”