“It’s an awesome feeling hearing their sisters and moms coming up to me and saying the kids are always asking, ‘Is it Saturday yet?’\u201d said Pe\u00f1a, who goes by Tino. \u201cThat puts a smile on my face immediately. Serving a community that is underserved in this area and seeing the smiles on their faces has certainly been worth it.”<\/p>\n
When Pe\u00f1a\u2019s project started in late 2022, he recalled his first session, a simple one-on-one connection with a boy named Lucas.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to see how it would go,” Pe\u00f1a said. “Over time, it kind of grew much bigger.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Young attendees playing Uno, a popular card game, on a Social Saturday.<\/p>\n
Today, Pe\u00f1a\u2019s special needs Social Saturday community has typically stretched to 20 or 25 attendees. The list of volunteers has amazingly expanded to 97 students from area high schools such as MAST, Mater Brickell, Carrollton and Gulliver Prep, all willing to donate their time for such a heart-warming cause.<\/p>\n
“They’re awesome,” Pe\u00f1a said.<\/p>\n
Others have taken notice, too. Pe\u00f1a recently won a Silver Knight Honorable Mention award in General Scholarship out of 55 Miami-Dade County seniors.<\/p>\n
Pe\u00f1a is also a National Merit Scholar, Coolidge Senator, Bank of America Student Leader, state champion in Economics, as well as a Congressional Award Gold Medal winner that will be bestowed on him soon.<\/p>\n
As a sophomore, Pe\u00f1a earned the Hero Volunteer Award from “It Takes a Village<\/a>,” the nonprofit from which co-founder Laura Teran Zapata still oversees the Social Saturdays gatherings.<\/p>\n Pe\u00f1a, who has been a “pretty good” varsity baseball pitcher and a third degree black belt karate instructor under the tutelage of Sensei Robert Duzoglou<\/a>, said he got interested in Social Saturdays after learning that a cousin, Aiden Garcia, up in New Jersey, was diagnosed with autism.<\/p>\n Tino Pe\u00f1a with the RDCA MMA team after receiving his black belt.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n