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Winner of the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund - January 6, 2009
Rachel Armour Honored with $5,000 Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award
January 6, 2009

Key West, Florida Resident Wins Cash Award To Create Afterschool Literacy And Public Speaking Program For At-Risk Girls


(New York, NY, January 6, 2009) - Key West, Florida resident Rachel Armour, 27, is one step closer to fulfilling her dream of creating a better tomorrow for her community. Rachel was named this week’s winner of the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, a weekly $5,000 cash award program from Avon Products, Inc. to support individuals in their work to empower women. She is the third recipient of a Hello Tomorrow Fund award in Florida since the program launched in 2007, and was selected by an expanded panel of judges that now includes Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York, and actress Phylicia Rashad. Rachel will use her award to support i Control Power Girls, a non-profit program which seeks to improve literacy and teach motivational speaking skills to girls in the Key West community of Bahama Village.

Bahama Village is one of the poorest areas in Key West. The community is primarily populated by Bahamian immigrants, many of whom do not speak proper English upon their arrival in the U.S., thus making it difficult for their families to advance into American society. The city housing conditions are sub-standard, and girls raised under such conditions often are at higher risk for teen pregnancy, drug use and domestic abuse, among other issues.

Rachel and her family lived in housing projects in Chicago, Illinois when she was a child. During her childhood, she witnessed many violent crimes including robbery and sometimes murder. At the age of 15, Rachel began motivational speaking, which she turned into a business called the Choices i Control Academic Program. The program was created to help students master standardized test-taking methods by breaking down essay writing into easy steps. Rachel’s program showed a 95 percent success rate among participants, and was then adopted in Dayton, OH, Detroit and Lansing, MI, as well as Chicago. Since the beginning of the program, Rachel has traveled around the country training teachers to integrate the Choices i Control Academic Program into their curriculum. Upon moving to Key West to teach high school English, Rachel noted a lack of guidance and education in the lives of her students from low-income families. Because of her own childhood experiences, Rachel related to their lifestyle and had the desire to mentor, teach, and encourage them to make something better of their lives.

With help from the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, Rachel will be able to offer her program to help to 25-30 girls from Bahama Village learn to properly read, write, and communicate through motivational speaking. The girls, ages 12-17, will meet once a week for 10 weeks in an afterschool program, and will learn public speaking techniques, Web site creation tools, and how to create an inspirational speech on topics affecting youth, such as drug prevention, self-esteem, academic success, abstinence, and diversity. Once finalized, the girls’ speeches will be video-taped and marketed to schools nationwide. “Thousands of youth will be influenced by their inspiring stories and motivational words,” says Rachel, “I want to help them find their voice.”

Rachel will use the Hello Tomorrow Fund award money to create curriculum materials, and purchase a video camera, editing software, and a laptop computer. By empowering the girls to read, write, and speak properly, Rachel hopes this project will prevent low self-esteem and encourage academic and social growth.

Rachel’s winning application to the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund met the criteria of clearly presenting unique and achievable objectives to empower women or girls and ultimately improve society. It was selected from a pool of strong contenders by an expert panel of judges, including personal finance expert Suze Orman, actress Phylicia Rashad, Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York, and experts in business and grantmaking. “Giving young women a voice and an outlet for self-expression can be life-changing,” commented judge Sarah Ferguson on Rachel’s proposal.

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