High Schooler Gives Back To Her Community with Her Non-Profit

Gulianna Perez, a 15-year-old freshman at High Tech High School, founded GRP Gives Back with one sole purpose: to help her community. GRP Gives Back is a North Bergen-based, youth-led non-profit organization run by Perez and her family. They work together to donate canned goods, non-perishable food, toys, and more to different organizations around New Jersey.

“We try to provide humanitarian aid to people around Hudson County,” she explained. “We give to Our Lady of Grace Church in Fairview, NJ, and they give the food to the Fairview Food Pantry. We give to Sacred Heart Church in Lindhurst, NJ, one church in Hoboken, the North Hudson Community Action Corporation.” She has also donated to the Church of the Holy Rosary Food Pantry in North Bergen and the Bergen County Food Bank, expanding far from her local town. “We donate to hospitals too, like the Hackensack Children’s Hospital.”

Last year, she was able to donate over a hundred toys of all age ranges to Hackensack Children’s Hospital during Christmas, something she hopes to replicate this year.

Perez started this initiative when she realized that many people in her community, especially the elderly and financially struggling, were underserved. She realized this when she went to visit her great-grandmother at Arbor Glenn Nursing Home. “When I went to visit her, I always saw people who were sick and needed help. It made me feel a certain way because I am very close to my family and the people around me. When I saw them, I felt for them because I did not see them as a random person, but as a person living with my great-grandmother.”

To combat the gloom that she witnessed, she held many events at the senior center to uplift the elderly. “We had an ice cream social and always threw parties there,” she exclaimed. “Everyone was very happy, everyone loved it. Even with the littlest things, they were happy that they could do something new, something they can’t do any other day.” From then on, she continued to serve the people of her community and bring happiness to their day.

To expand her organization, she plans to get more youth on her team to spread the joy of giving. “I try to incorporate youth into the action,” she explains. “I want this to be normal for people, I want people to help others and see what happens when they help others.” At her former middle school, she held an Earth Day event, gauging student interest in spreading kindness around the North Bergen community. “I created that initiative of painting a kind quote on a rock. I think this is important for the community because school can be hard for teenagers, so having this can help them,” she states.

Perez is always crafting ways to bring together community service and environmental sustainability, a passion of hers. She often does park cleanups at 80th Street Park in North Bergen and even prototyped a lightbulb that was recognized by LG Electronics. “I’m planning to plant flowers around my community once the weather becomes better and make an activity for my community to participate in,” she remarks. Her goals for the future are to bring connectivity into her community, whether that be with just one can donated or one flower planted in North Bergen.