Cutting the tension, Hopson played some comical video clips of people displaying poor etiquette in a buffet line.
“Do not smell the food,” said Hopson, who is the founder and executive director of Ever-Appropriate Etiquette Institute. The ladies laughed as someone in the video took a big sniff while the people in line made appalled faces.

On February 18, Hopson led the last workshop of the Young Women of Power Summit, hosted by the Tyrone Thompson Institute for Nonviolence and sponsored by the Kwame Foundation. From 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., professional women led mentoring workshops for 60 high-school students from Confluence Academy, Vashon High School, The Covenant House and the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
“The young ladies have a desire to be the best that they can,” said Yolonda Lankford, executive director of the Kwame Foundation. “They need a roadmap. So that’s what we did today, provide them with a road map in areas where they may not have a chance to get advice every day.”

Keynote speakers Tracie Berry McGhee and Angela Lewis explained how they can define themselves and carve out opportunities. Law enforcement agents had open conversations with the students about how to interact with police. And a panel of businesswomen told their stories of success.

For Vashon High senior Tammara Marshall, one of the phrases that stuck out in her mind came from police officer Brandy Gates, who said, “If you knew better, you would do better.”
“It’s true,” Marshall said. “You have to step outside your comfort zone and get used to things.”
When she was a sophomore, Marshall said her biology teacher encouraged her to do just that. Her teacher Samantha Lurie, a former Teach For America corps member, pushed her to be a leader and public speaker when she participated in a student trip to Costa Rica to study biology.
“It’s refreshing to see how far I’ve come – how easy it comes to volunteer and stand up and speak,” she said. “It’s a skill that you get used to, and then it comes natural.”
Junior Marniece Doss said Lewis’ talk on envisioning the future resonated with her, especially the idea that oftentimes you cannot envision how you will reach your goal. She said sometimes she will tirelessly work at something, yet fail.
“I want to give up, but you still want to get there,” she said. “That happens to me often. I’ve just learned to push through those obstacles. And I have a lot of them.”
Doss grew up without parents, and she lives with other family members. As a freshman, she said she never went to school. Then she took Lurie’s biology class and learned about the trip to Costa Rica. She wanted to go bad enough that she made an agreement with Lurie to earn a 4.0 grade point average. And she did it.
“Miss Lurie is the best teacher I’ve ever had,” she said. “I’ve achieved things that I never thought I would be able to do. I never thought in my life that I would get straight A’s.”
Lurie arranged for the Doss and Marshall to attend the summit.
“Sometimes, when obstacles take place, my students may tend to second-guess themselves,” said Lurie, who also attended. “I think an event like today totally empowers them and uplifts them. It shows them that they can achieve whatever they want to through hard work and perseverance.”

For Lurie, she felt that Kwame Building Group CEO Tony Thompson set the tone for the day when he said, “Nobody makes it until everyone makes it.”
Not only were the presenters “paying if forward,” but they were also setting an example of how the young women will one day also have an opportunity to pass on that wisdom as well, she said.
“I was looking at the panel of business women, and I was thinking, ‘I am confident that my students will be the next generation up there,’” she said. “And I can’t wait to see my students up there talking to the next generation.”

The event was held at the St. Louis Community College’s William J. Harrison Education Center, where the Tyrone Thompson Institute regularly leads a program to mentor suspended students in the St. Louis Public School District.

The St. Louis American © March 2015