To celebrate the end of a year, a group of students attending a program from the Booker T. Washington Community Center are going somewhere they've never gone before.

In just one day, a band of 10- to 18-year-old girls participating with the center's SIMUKAI right of passage program will hop aboard an Amtrak train bearing south to the home of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy for a 10-day Disney World adventure.

“This is a lifetime experience,” said Booker T. Washington Center Executive Director Monique Wright-Williams, who will accompany the group to Florida. “No matter what happens, no one can take this away from them. That means a whole lot to me.”

SIMUKAI is a program that endeavors to provide young women rite of passage experiences as they grow from children to adolescents. Two years ago, a group of participants suggested tongue-in-cheek that a trip to Disney World would be a fantastic way to culminate the year-long program, Wright-Williams recalled.

And so planning began to make that a reality.

The first point of business was fundraising, as a whopping $26,000 was needed to fund the trip - that figure also includes the cost of parent chaperones, who are all paying their own way.

Wright-Williams said the girls conducted can and bottle drives and opened a summer store, within which they sold finger foods like chicken, french fries, nachos, onion rings, potato chips and candy. To reward the girls for their fundraising efforts, Wright-Williams booked a day at Universal Studios and the vacationers will take a dip at Disney World's water park.

Teachers from Auburn High School contributed bags of pennies and cans and a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post donated $500.

But by far the largest financial source came from Auburn Correctional Facility inmates, who banded together to donate $1,870.

That's something Wright-Williams hopes the girls of SIMUKAI remember as they go through life.

“I hope they learn about the inherent value of humanity,” Wright-Williams said, “that their largest donation came from those that may be considered less desirable or unworthy, that their largest supporter came from a group of people often discounted and discredited.”

But there is another thing she hopes for the students going on the trip.

“I also want them to have a super good time,” she said. “I want them to be kids for a change. Many of our kids don't get a chance to be kids often.”

Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or alyssa.sunkin@lee.net