Miami – Young ladies from Urgent Inc.’s Rites of Passage and the F.A.C.E. (Film, Arts, Coding, and Entrepreneurship) programs graduated on Saturday, May 21. The intention of the Rites of Passage program is to empower the participants to discover their purpose while cultivating a responsibility to engage in community as they transition from adolescence into adulthood. The graduation was a collaboration between Urgent Inc. and Delou’s Africa Dance Ensemble & Delou’s Youth Arts initiative.

The F.A.C.E. program is a paid intern- ship that offers life skills and professional enrichment to boys and girls of high school age. The event was sponsored by The Children’s Trust, Women’s Fund, and Miami-Dade County at Hadley Park and featured performances by the dance ensembles Venus Rising and Delou’s Africa Dance Ensemble, which provides children and adults the opportunity for expression, growth and appreciation by facilitating artistic education through traditional African dance, drum, music, and history. Tina Howell, an award-winning entrepreneur, delivered the commencement speech. The visionary entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the business world is the CEO of Virtual Home Care Inc., a home health agency located in Dallas, Texas, as well as two highly successful Wingstop franchises in South Florida.

The 2015 Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Summit awarded Howell its FranPHOTO chisee of the Year award.

“My first location is still one of the top producing Wingstop restaurants in the region. I get awards [from corporate] for being a member of Wingstop’s Million Dollar Club, once you reach that level of sales,” said Howell, who was a featured speaker at the 2016 Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Summit.