Kiwanis hosts Miss N.Y. for empowering children

The East Meadow Kiwanis hosted Miss New York 2021 at their meeting on Wednesday at Borrelli’s restaurant. Sydney Park, 25, of Manhattan, who graduated from Columbia in 2018, with a degree in American Studies and is entering her third year at Fordham pursuing a law degree, is a Miss America hopeful.

Lisa Hallett, Kiwanis president, said Park requested that she come to a meeting to speak to the Kiwanians. “She told us what she was doing and since we’re an organization that deals with children,” Hallett said, “so we thought it would be a good idea for her to come down and tell us what she was involved with.”

Park said that she originally joined the Miss New York pageant, an organization that offers  scholarships, to help pay for her education in a fun way. But she has managed to get so much more.

“It’s a lot of fun and you get to win some scholarship dollars along the way,” she said, “and do a lot of good work in your community,” Some of her best friends are women she’s met in the pageant, she added.

Those participating in the Miss New York pageant are required to pick a social impact initiative. According to the Miss New York website, “This is a service organization. SSI’s vary widely and can be an organization, an idea, or a movement. It is open-ended and should be chosen based on the candidate’s passions and experience.”

“One of the most amazing parts of the Miss New York organization and the Miss America organization is that every single titleholder at every single level has a social impact initiative,” Park said. “They speak about them, they advocate for them and they support them.”

Her SII, “One Team,” aims to empower youth through sports and to promote gender equality within the sports industry.

“I specifically focus on making sure that youth has access to sports and the ability to engage in sports at a youth level and recreationally across New York state,” said Park, adding that she does this through her coaching with South Bronx United, a nonprofit youth development organization that uses soccer to facilitate social change.

“Everyone of us here does things for the kids,” Harry Demiris, a Kiwanis member and past president said. “It’s great to see the work you’re doing.”

Park coaches 40 girls in soccer on a field that she said is about the size of the room they were in at Borrelli’s.

“It’s really hard because these girls show up and look at the field and they’re like, ‘How am I supposed to play soccer here?’” she said. “How are they supposed to feel like their team supports them and their organization supports them when they have to play in a space the size of this room.”

She said that regardless of the challenges, like a small field, it is really important to her that girls have access to sports. Park wants them to feel like they are supported and seen as athletes, not just as participants.

She also focuses on children that have been historically underrepresented in sports. This includes cis-gender girls, transgender girls and non-binary youth. A great deal of Park’s work focuses on underserved communities.

“I’ve always loved sports,” she said. “Sports played such an integral role in who I am in terms of developing leadership skills, teamwork, individual accountability, just all of those things that make for really strong women. I wanted to make sure that every little girl had that opportunity to build that skill set.”

Sports are such a universal experience Park said, adding that she is glad that she has been able to advocate for youth in sports.

Tom Gallagher, Kiwanis member and past president, said he supports what Park is doing. “I’m a girl dad and a girl grandad,” he said. “It’s important to get them involved early.”

Hallett presented Park with a $200 donation from the East Meadow Kiwanis. “She has a really great platform,” Hallett said. “Anything to empower a child is what we do.”