Money raised through the annual Miami Lakes Food & Wine Festival has helped fund $100,000 in grants for community projects dispersed by the Miami Lakes Town Foundation over the past eight years, officials said.
For 2025-2026, the foundation awarded $11,705 in grants to a civic organization and four local schools.
The town council congratulated Festival Co-founder Lynn Matos and Foundation Director Fred Senra at its meeting on Jan. 20.
This year, grants have funded equipment for educational programs, Knowledge Bowls (debate competitions), Model United Nations conference and beautification projects over the past eight years.
The Miami Lakes Town Foundation was founded in 2005. After the Food & Wine Festival began in 2017, its founders decided to donate proceeds to the Foundation for a grant program.
“With the grants we awarded this past week, we surpassed the magic number of $100,000,” Senra said.
Matos said it was gratifying to watch the money support students and teachers.
“When you see it in action and you see those kids, it makes every single moment where it’s late, I don’t sleep, I’m worried … [worth it],” Matos said.
Matos said she was thankful to the original festival supporters.
“I just sit there and smile because the work they are doing is just so incredible … I hope it keeps going,” Matos said.
“It’ll keep going if it’s the will of the community and the town to give back, to be kind, to drink wine, to celebrate the small businesses,” Matos said.
“And I truly think that it’s remarkable when we started in 2017, think about the restaurant scene was like in Miami Lakes and what the transformation has been and how many great restaurants have come and thrived and grown and are just doing amazing things in the town,” she said. “They’re such incredible community partners.”
The foundation invites schools and residents to apply for money each year that is then distributed in a variety of grants. Some projects have been for beautification, such as a Boy Scout’s planting of 1,000 orchids in three town parks.
Other past grants were used to purchase musical instruments; a school morning broadcast project that promoted kindness and good behaviors; training for students to work in health care facilities in town and a program to develop strength, character and good habits.
The 2025-2026 Town Foundation grant recipients are:
• $500 to Lya Quintana Nunez on behalf of Virtutem Populo, for the Miami-Dade County Civic Knowledge Bowl that tests knowledge of civics, government, history and leadership.
• $1,600 to third grade teacher Teresita Turino at Miami Lakes K-8 Center, for creating fraction experts with Frax Math, a game-based fractions program to improve student knowledge and aid their performance on the FAST test.
• $1,500 to sixth grade teacher and Bobcat Dance Team sponsor Mayri Martinez at Bob Graham Education Center, to help pay fees for the 2025-2026 dance competition season and recitals.
• $1,000 to mock trial coach and teacher Ana Soto-Gonzalez at Barbara Goleman Senior High School, for the Tampa Mock Trial Circuit Court Competition in Hillsborough County. The teacher’s goal is for debaters to attend the competition and become one of the top five teams in the state.
• $650 to biology teacher Jennifer Sicre at Miami Lakes K-8 Center, for The Brainwave Lab: Measuring the Middle Schooler’s Mind in Motion, which teaches eighth grade students about using headbands to measure brainwaves during certain activities and learn the importance of focused and positive thinking.
• $5,205 to reading coach Leslie Diaz at Miami Lakes K-8 Center for Connected Readers: Empowering Literacy through Technology & Kindness, to provide digital tools for students with literacy challenges.
• $1,205 magnet and legal studies teacher Rukayat Adebisi at Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School for the Trojan MUN IV – Model United Nations, a competitive conference to encourage civic engagement and diplomatic skills in middle school students in Miami Lakes, Hialeah and neighboring municipalities.