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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Symposium Celebrates Women, Fun

Mothers and daughters enjoyed a wide range of events at the 2nd Annual McKenzie’s Way Women and Girls Symposium and Fun Day on Saturday at the St. Croix Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC). In classrooms around the school, educators led workshops on everything from jewelry making to yoga, and attendees were free to bounce from one class to another until they found something that interested them.

Event organizer, Cenita Heywood, said the event was partially modeled off a similar event for boys known as Carousel.

“A lot of people had called us and said, ‘what about the women?’ So I decided I’ll do something for them,” Heywood said.

The event is named after former CTEC guidance counselor, Carolyn McKenzie, who organized several successful programs for students at the school. Heywood says that one of the reasons the programs were so popular was that McKenzie always found a way to offer them for free. Heywood aspired to that goal while planning the symposium.

“I said, I’m going to have to do it McKenzie’s way because all of her programs were successful,” she explained. “We don’t charge anything for any of the programs we do. We get money from different sources, we do fundraisers, whatever it takes.”

Around the complex women could be seen belly dancing, learning origami, and taking etiquette lessons. The event was primarily attended by girls and their mothers, but Heywood said the day was for all women ages 8 and up.

In the kitchen, chef Raymond Matthew taught a group of very excited young girls how to make gourmet cupcakes. He walked them through the process of preparing the batter and let each girl have a turn working the stand mixer.

One of his students dropped a big glob of the mixture while they were filling the cupcake tins, and Matthew just laughed and said, “That’s right. Make a mess. That’s the joy of baking!”

Ann Jerris brought her two daughters, Kayla and Kaylisha, to the event; she said that when she heard about the symposium, she thought it would be a good way to have a girl’s day out. Her one complaint was that there was too much going on and they didn’t get to go to all the classes they wanted.

“I wanted to do the cupcake class!” she said. “If there was more time I would have done it.”

Along with the fun activities, volunteers were on hand to teach girls about serious topics as well, such as HIV and domestic abuse.

Darlene Springer and Natalie Joseph from the VI Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Council gave a presentation on teen dating violence. They told the girls to avoid being a victim by keeping an eye out for certain red flags.

They said that if your partner constantly insults you or keeps close watch on where you go and whom you talk to, there is potential for physical or emotional abuse in your relationship.

The biggest red flag, Springer said, is jealousy.

“A lot of teenagers, and even adults, feel that jealousy is cute,” she said. “But that’s the biggest sign you got to look at, because if you don’t have trust in your relationship, you’re going to have problems in your relationship.”

“One of our main goals is giving them [women] the resources,” Heywood added. She hoped the girls would have a good time at the event and walk away having learned something they could use in their own lives.

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