Kenyetta Richmond is all about respect, and she has spent the last four years helping teenage girls throughout Forsyth County respect themselves.
Richmond, 40, coordinates the "Teens-4-Change" program at Family Services. Teens-4-Change is a club for girls ages 14 to 18 in Forsyth County that teaches leadership skills and educates girls about healthy relationships and healthy living.
And though organizing the program is part of Richmond's job, she has, the girls she has worked with say, made helping them her life.
"(Kenyetta) made me more strong-willed, by teaching me not to settle for less," said Shereé Patton, who is 18 and a freshman at UNC-Charlotte now. "Most girls, even in college, you see they really just want attention and for them to get attention they'll do anything and therefore guys just treat them any kind of way… and I think through Miss Kenyetta, she's taught us that we're better than that."
Richmond, who will be honored Tuesday night by the Winston-Salem City Council with a Young Dreamers Award for her work, didn't set out to change the way teenage girls think about themselves. Before taking a position at Family Services, she was a corporate trainer for the Houlihan's restaurant chain.
"I didn't know anything about domestic violence or sexual assault," says Richmond, who also trains volunteers for Family Services. "I actually got hired because of my training capabilities."
Richmond said when she started working with teenage girls, she thought back to her own teen years and to the romantic relationships her friends then had.
Richmond wanted young women, particularly those with low self-esteem, to expect and demand respect, equality and love in their own romantic relationships. Young women, she said, too often sold themselves short in order to make their boyfriends happy. Richmond wanted to change that.
"I firmly believe that if you give teens their own voice, and you are authentic and genuine, instead of lecturing about issues, that it can make a difference (in their lives)," she said.
Richmond leads discussions about everything from dating to sex to exercise with the members of Teens-4-Change. She organizes discussions between mothers and daughters, holds movie nights where she shows films that focus on healthy relationships and healthy self-images, and plans daylong workshops for teenaged girls to help them value themselves.
Patton, who was a member of Teens-4-Change when she was a high school student at Mount Tabor, said those trainings gave her knowledge that has helped her as a college student.
"You know how to coach your friends in respecting themselves," Patton said. "And I think that was what she was really big on. If she was nothing else, it was about us learning how to respect ourselves and guys respecting us."
DeWanna Hamlin, Richmond's supervisor at Family Services, nominated her for the Young Dreamers Award because, Hamlin said, she believes Richmond's passion has changed the lives of some young women in Forsyth County.
"She dreams and she dreams big," Hamlin said. "And she passes that on to the teens that she works with — she wants them to focus on, of course knowing yourself first, understanding your boundaries, determining what it is that is your purpose and passion in life and then just going for that."
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