The Rhonda Walker Foundation offers comprehensive career, academic and personal development programming over a 5 year period for our teens. Our goal through our monthly seminars, workshops, retreats, field trips and summer camps is to create strong, confident, successful and moral future leaders within every child. Our programs address self-esteem, all forms of etiquette, leadership techniques, goal-setting, health, career planning, college preparation, education, financial literacy, self-defense, leadership, community outreach, mental and emotional well-being, mentoring, public speaking, life skills and more.
Our Programs include:
24 Hour Girl Talk – A weekend retreat each spring that includes a day and a half of workshops with professional speakers
Arts, Culture and History – Throughout the year our activities include theatrical performances, museum tours and our Artistic Expression workshops where teens can express there thoughts and feelings through creations on canvas
Camp I Can – Our most anticipated activity of the year! Camp I Can is a self-esteem, confidence, team building and leadership weekend retreat of fun filled activities and challenges while tucked away in a quiet camp ground in Onondaga, Michigan
Career Development - Our goal is to prepare our teens for the future and we have a comprehensive career development program that exposes our teens to the professional world through job shadowing with numerous corporations throughout the metro area. This exposure helps our teens identify their interests and gifts and match them to a career field the teens can pursue in the future.
Dress for Success – We also teach the teens about appropriate attire for the work place during our annual “Dress for Success” workshop. This exciting activity not only teaches teens the do’s and don’ts of “what to” and “what not to” wear in the work place, we also give our teens a monetary allowance and a timed challenge at a local mall to buy a professional outfit. Then the teens wear their new work attire during the national “Take Our Daughters to Work Day.”
Job Shadowing – We work hard to build partners within the metro Detroit business community in order to provide job shadowing opportunities our teens. To date our teens have had the opportunity to spend a day at Compuware Headquarters, Comerica Bank, General Motors, Detroit Receiving Hospital, J.D. Power and Associates just to name a few.
Summer Jobs Program – We know that summertime can often be down time for our teens so we keep them busy with our summer jobs program. Our teens are hired for summer internship with our business community partners. This teaches our teens about responsibility, hard work and expectations.
College Tour – The RWF believes every one of our teens should go to college and we have a huge emphasis on exposing our teens to college life, assisting them with choosing a college and helping them identify what they’d like to major in. The college tour takes the teens literally across the country to tour Michigan Colleges and Universities along with Historically Black Colleges and Univeristies nationwide.
Community Outreach – As a charitiable organization ourselves we know the importance of giving back and we emphasize this intensly among our youth. Each year we participate in numerous community projects to help others in need. We have been volunteering annually for the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries homeless community since 2003.
Etiquette Training – Our teens endure intense etiquette training for five years! They can literally teach an etiquette class when they complete our programs. We emphasize training in all areas of etiquette from table etiquette to how to walk, talk and interact in every setting imaginable.
Field Trips and Retreats – In addition to our intense educational, career and personal develpment programs we also like to have some fun and reward our teens with exciting outings. Our field trips include trips to Cedar Point amusement park every June to celebrate the end of the school year, trips to local museums and our highly anticipated Winter Wonderland Retreat in Northern Michigan. This annual January trip takes our teens to Indian River, Michigan for a weekend of snowmobiling, sledding, snow showing, ice fishing, bon fires and fun memories to last a life time!
Health and Wellness – We also emphasize the importance of healthy habits. Our teens cannot realize their full potential without also learning to care for their wellbeing. That’s why we stress physical exercise, self-defense, and a general awareness of observing a healthy lifestyle. For our teens to become tomorrow’s leaders, they first have to take care of themselves today.
