(Modesto, CA) The Modesto Junior College African American Education Conference will take place on Saturday, February 28, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Mary Stuart Rogers (MSR) Student Learning Center on West Campus, 2201 Blue Gum Avenue, Modesto. The free conference for ages 13 – 21, is geared toward encouraging students to stay in school, plan for college and develop skills that will ensure student success. Parents are encouraged to attend as well.
The conference will include workshops on counseling, financial aid and MJC’s First Year Experience program. Entertainment will include Pan African Drumming by Khemya MitRahina, a show by step team Omega Gents, spoken word by Brandi Spencer and music by the band Ahousuo Morado.
The keynote speaker will be entrepreneur and actress Cynthia Foreman, owner of Sweetie Pies, LLC. Her journey as an entrepreneur began with a bake sale fundraiser for the Little Folks Choir in the parking lot of the Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Houston Texas. Her miniature sweet potato pies were a hit and soon she was selling 150 to 200 pies each Sunday, and her business “Sweetie Pies” (taken from her childhood nickname) was born. She relocated from Houston to Oakland, California and in January of 2006, Foreman’s Sweetie Pies, LLC was re-established and headquartered in the Bay Area. In 2011 she introduced a line of shortbread cookies and is now preparing to launch a gluten-free line of mixes for buttermilk pancakes, brownies and sweet potato and jalapeno cornbread.
Foreman is also a member of the Screen Actors Guild and has done both film and television work, as well as written and performed in her own one-woman production of “Bruised, But not Broken” in venues such as Madison Square Garden, Shubert Theater off Broadway, the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival, as well as at colleges and universities. Many of her performances have been used to raise funds for battered women’s shelters.
The African American Education Conference check-in begins at 7:30 a.m. Although conference admission and parking are free, pre-registration is required in order to guarantee participants a complimentary continental breakfast and lunch catered by Larry Mac. To register email griffinj@mjc.edu (include AAE Conference in the subject line) by February 20, 2015. For additional information call Monika Schortner at (209) 575-7990 or John Griffin, III at (209) 575-6700.
