Question: Where can inner-city Kalamazoo schoolgirls ages 9 through 14 experience hands-on career exploration with women lawyers, scientists, pilots, and world travelers, AND experience college life?
Answer: Kalamazoo College, July 7 through 13.
The Tate-Stone Travel Writers Academy—a program of the Merze Tate Travel Club—has teamed with K, Western Michigan University’s Lewis Walker Institute, Ladies’ Library Association, Black Arts and Cultural Center, Community Voices magazine, and other Kalamazoo-area sponsors to offer a unique six-day residential academy for Kalamazoo schoolgirls.
According to Tate-Stone organizer and Community Voices Editor Sonya Bernard-Hollins, the Travel Writers Academy will help girls meet inspirational women, allow them to work and lead service projects in their own community, introduce them to the field of media, expose them to a college setting, and help prepare them to take advantage of The Kalamazoo Promise, a program that provides free college tuition to Kalamazoo Public School graduates.
The Tate-Stone students, selected through essay applications, will create their own Girls Can! Magazine based on the women and places they visit and photograph during their stay at K.
The Travel Writers Academy takes its name from two leading Kalamazoo educators.
Merze Tate was a 1927 WMU graduate and the first African-American to graduate from Oxford University. She became a professor at Howard University, an international expert on disarmament, and a successful businesswoman.
Lucinda Hinsdale-Stone helped form women′s clubs across Michigan during the 1800s, one being the now historic Ladies’ Library Association in downtown Kalamazoo. She and her husband, James Stone, were important Kalamazoo College leaders in the mid-1800s. Both women were world travelers who championed women’s educational opportunities, and chaperoned young women on educational travels.
For more information and to learn how to sponsor a student to the Tate-Stone Travel Writers Academy at K, email contact@merzetate.com, or call Sonya Bernard-Hollins at (269) 365-4019.
By Mallory Zink ’15