Portrait by ChiChi Ubiña

YWCA Greenwich will be holding its 6th Annual Women Who Inspire Awards to recognize exceptional women in our community. YWCA Greenwich’s Women Who Inspire Awards was established to recognize and celebrate outstanding women who have excelled in philanthropic, professional, and volunteer pursuits. Importantly, these honorees have enriched the lives of many in our community. This event acknowledges the changes in society that have led to the fluidity of work/life pursuits for women of today.

 

For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Francesca Marangi is a senior at Sacred Heart Greenwich. She has been deeply involved in environmental initiatives throughout high school. Beginning with her membership in the student environmental club, she now serves as a student representative on Sacred Heart’s Stewardship and Sustainability Committee, a faculty-student group working on cross-divisional programming. Francesca helped introduce composting to the school and has organized and led annual school-wide Earth Day events. Over the past two years, she has worked with a group of students, led by Sacred Heart Outdoor Education teacher, Margaret Vondermeden, to develop a robust beekeeping program. They maintain multiple hives, harvest honey throughout the seasons, and create educational experiences for the K-12 community on the importance of native pollinators like honeybees. One of her proudest accomplishments is the successful effort to become an Audubon Certified campus, one of only three such K-12 campuses in the country. Francesca is now working with faculty on an application to become a Connecticut Green LEAF certified school and to compose an Indigenous Land Acknowledgment.

Francesca is also passionate about art and dance. In middle and early high school, she was part of East Pointe Dance’s Elite Performance Company, a community service-oriented dance group. Her love of dance led her to volunteer at Heartsong in White Plains where she assists therapists on Saturday mornings, supporting children with significant neurodevelopmental disabilities through dance, art, and music therapy.

This past summer, Francesca spent 10 days in Lourdes, France as part of Sacred Heart’s annual service-based trip where she assisted the Ampleforth Pilgrimage. Francesca is also co-head of the Sacred Heart Art Club, which raised over $1,000 last year to purchase art supplies for a New York City community organization serving low-income students.

Outside of her community service and environmental work, Francesca spends most of her free time dancing, playing tennis, and collecting anything honeybee related. She will be a captain of her school’s Varsity Tennis team this spring.

Next year, Francesca will attend Hamilton College where she plans to major in Environmental Studies with a minor in Dance or Art.