Loving the skin they’re in, staying on a path to success and encouraging others is the message about 200 teen girls recently heard during an eight-hour conference.
Loving the skin they’re in, staying on a path to success and encouraging others is the message about 200 teen girls recently heard during an eight-hour conference.
Saturday, Embracing Your Future Association Inc. held it’s fifth annual No More Drama expo at the Illinois Institute of Technology for the teens and their parents, complete with a series of workshops for the girls about self-esteem, career development, domestic violence and a fashion show.
For parents only, a session was held to help them recognize their part in their child’s behavior by looking at their own childhood and how it possibly influences the child’s current behavior.
A seventh-grader from Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School, Shanikqua Williams, said she was already pretty much “headstrong” but needed to hear the advice that was given.
“Sometimes I come across as having an attitude, especially in school, but I didn’t think that I did. I was just speaking my mind, not realizing that I was going about it the wrong way. This conference opened my eyes, and I can go back home and to school with a different attitude,” the 13-year-old said.
The expo, themed this year as “When Girls Become Women,” is the brainchild of Embracing Your Future’s founder and CEO Melissa Harris.
Harris, a 31-year-old South Side native, started the organization eight years ago to implement training programs on self-esteem, career development, anger management, healthy parenting and life skills.
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