For current Haldane students, senior Sofia Kelly is a household name. Kelly has made a name for herself by dedicating much of her time to running the Habitat Revival Club.
Kelly founded the club in 2022 and has been president ever since. According to Kelly, she was spending a lot more time outside during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I became a lot more attuned to the pervasiveness of invasive plants, and was inspired to create an invasive plant management task force,” she said. After that, the Habitat Revival Club was born.
The club has worked on many projects over the past four years, such as building a pollinator garden behind the high school, introducing compost bins to the cafeteria, and bringing goats to school to eat the invasive mugwort herb. These projects are discussed frequently, but there are many lesser-known Habitat Revival Club endeavors as well. For example, every winter the club runs a seed sowing project, where they bury seeds in jugs of soil, let them germinate, and then sell them in the spring to fundraise.
The club submitted a video to the National Geographic Slingshot Challenge, a competition aimed at middle schoolers and high schoolers who each create a one-minute video explaining how they’re changing the environment for the better. “We were in the top 50 of 2,700 worldwide applicants, and we got an honorable mention!” Kelly said.
Senior Ada Caccamise, Vice President of the Habitat Revival Club, as well as Kelly ’s close friend, said that their main job together is to plan events and keep the club running smoothly. “Sofia writes and plans a lot of things for us, like our script or things we can do, and I work on all the visuals for it, like slideshows and presentations,” Caccamise said. “The great thing about working with Sofia is that we work together and can build ideas off of each other!”
Aside from her passion for environmentalism, Kelly is an opera singer and plans to pursue music in college. “This year I auditioned for 13 different music schools across the country,” she said. Kelly said her music inspiration comes from her father, Daniel Kelly, who is a professional musician. Some students worry about their hobbies being pushed aside in college, but Kelly said that she plans to either pursue a bachelor’s degree in music or a dual degree of music and environmental science. “Music will ultimately be just as large a part of my life as it always was,” she said.
Habitat Revival Club meets every Tuesday at tenth period in room 213 in the high school. All interested students are welcome to attend.
