Vendors embrace chance to celebrate women, cultures at YWCA Hamilton festival

YWCA Hamilton will honor 10 trailblazing women from Butler County this March in the inaugural HERstory & HERitage International Community Festival that honors the contributions of women and celebrates cultural richness. The event is set for Saturday, March 8, 2025, at the Champion Mill Conference Center at Spooky Nook Sports on North B Street. NICK GRAHAM/FILE

YWCA Hamilton will honor 10 trailblazing women from Butler County this March in the inaugural HERstory & HERitage International Community Festival that honors the contributions of women and celebrates cultural richness. The event is set for Saturday, March 8, 2025, at the Champion Mill Conference Center at Spooky Nook Sports on North B Street. NICK GRAHAM/FILE

Around three dozen businesses will help celebrate the diversity and culture of women Saturday with the inaugural HERstory & HERitage International Community Festival at Spooky Nook.

Allison Bokone saw this a unique opportunity for her daughter, Adelaide, a 15-year-old autistic child, to learn from other women business owners. Bokone helps run SadderDay Studios out of their Fairfield Twp. home.

Adelaide specializes in tactile art, pieces that are meant to be touched and experienced. Saturday’s HERstory festival is another opportunity for Adelaide to be out in the community, selling her art and to meet other female business owners.

“These kinds of events are good for her to go out into the community and meet other people, and it’s great when she can meet other women that have different successful businesses, creative businesses,” said Bokone. “I saw this was a great event and a great opportunity to see a lot of women doing a lot of different successful things.”

The biggest thing for Jasvir Bassi, owner of Mirchi, an Indian restaurant on High Street in downtown Hamilton that opened in 2023, is to meet other business owners and celebrate their cultures.

The Cunningham Sisters pose with then-state representative Sara Carruthers in the Statehouse Rotunda after the Hamilton residents recently performed on the NBC singing competition “The Voice” in 2021. PROVIDED PHOTO

Credit: Mary Cianciolo/Ohio Statehouse

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Credit: Mary Cianciolo/Ohio Statehouse

“I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet other women-owned businesses from different backgrounds because I haven’t had an opportunity to do that,” she said. “It’s important to support women who are getting out and opening their own businesses, and getting involved in the community.”

That’s also why Aliya Kahn, owner of Cakes by Aliya in West Chester Twp., wanted to participate. “It’s a great way to get my name out there,” she said.

She also likes that the proceeds are supporting the YWCA’s mission of ending the cycle of violence and homelessness among women.

“They’re doing something pretty amazing,” she said.

The free HERstory & HERitage festival at Spooky Nook Sports Champion Mill will also celebrate 10 Butler County women who have been transformational in their contributions to their communities.

The 10 women include: Eva Lande, Ann Antenen, Nellie Craig Walker, Virginia Ritan, Shakila Ahmad, Jackie Phillips Carter, Kathy Klink, Katherine Rumph-Cole, Kelli Kurtz, and Dr. Julia Goodman, the first female physician in Hamilton, and the founder of the YWCA Hamilton in 1900.

Four of the honorees will be honored posthumously: Goodman died in 1902, Walker in 1969, Lande in 2005 and Antenen in 2022.


                        En Vogue performs at a party celebrating a collaboration between Google and the artist Derrick Adams in Miami on Dec. 4, 2024. The annual global art fair in Miami Beach featured a heady mélange of artists, gallerists, A-list celebrities, luxury brands and Mad Libs-esque collaborations among many of them. (Martina Tuaty/The New York Times)

Credit: NYT

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Credit: NYT

There will be free transportation available to and from the event in Hamilton’s Riverview and North End neighborhoods, as well as in the Middletown and Fairfield area. Route details will be posted on the YWCA’s website and Facebook page.

The event runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and later in the evening, there will be a special concert featuring the 1990s female power group En Vogue. Hamilton’s Cunningham Sisters will open for the group.

While the festival is free to attend, the concert, which is set to begin at 8 p.m. Saturday is a ticketed event. Concert tickets are $200 for general seating in the Spooky Nook ballroom and $100 for standing room only. There is also a $300 ticket that includes a VIP meet and greet with En Vogue.

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