When she began teaching two years ago, Qiana Keith started hearing from other teachers about an ugly trend of young women losing direction and becoming unwed mothers.

Keith decided she wanted to do something to help improve their lives.

She joined with a couple of other Gainesville school system educators — assistant principal Gwenell Brown and literacy coach Beverly Robinson of New Holland Core Knowledge Academy — to plan the black community's first cotillion, or debutante ball, in about 50 years.

"I don't want them to become statistics anymore," said Keith, 31, in an interview last week at her home. "I think this program is going to be able to help them create some higher self-esteem."

She added, "Every time I come home, I get tired of seeing little girls in their (short shorts) walking around the streets."

The Genesis Council, a project of the civic-minded Newtown Florist Club of Gainesville, is sponsoring the effort, which has been dubbed "Sister, You are Beautiful" and involves a series of training sessions and volunteer initiatives.

The program culminates in the March 20 ball at Gainesville Civic Center.

The first training session, focusing on how God views discipline, took place in Keith's Garden Drive home. The first "Heal the World" volunteer effort took place Saturday, with girls handing out breakfast to area seniors.

Keith approaches the whole experience with some firsthand knowledge. A debutante herself in Columbus, she became a mother for the first time at 18 while in college.

She and her husband have five daughters and one son. She finished at the University of Georgia and began teaching at Enota Multiple Intelligences Academy, and she has plans to pursue her master's degree.

Eventually, she wants to see her daughters — two of them are 13-year-old twins — become debutantes.

"I think that if we grow the girls up the way we want them to be as women, they can avoid ... (negative) self-fulfilling prophecies," Keith said. "If you live a life of poverty and not knowing what the future holds, you're going to pass it on to your children."

She said the community holds too many young mothers "whose kids can't read or don't know how to hold a pencil or whose lives at home are so entangled in chaos that they can't focus at school."

At one time, the black community in Gainesville regularly held beauty pageants and other events that "would give girls like myself at least a foundation to have something to build on," Keith said.

"There isn't anything like that anymore," she said.

Keith wants to recreate an event held 50 years ago at Fair Street School featuring an array of young girls - at the debutante age of 16 or otherwise - in a sort of May Day celebration, with flowers and white dresses.

Fair Street was all-black then. These days, it is an elementary school, Fair Street International Baccalaureate World School.

The debutante ball will start about 7 p.m. at the civic center.

Boys about their age will escort the girls at the event, where the girls will give their mothers a rose and dance with their fathers or some other influential, older man in their lives. The girls also will dance a waltz.

As for the boys, "they go through a training program as well," Keith said. "They've got to check out."

"After (the girls have been) presented, it's just a party, with eating and dancing and a (disc jockey)," she added.

Victoria Richards' daughter, 16-year-old Amber, is one of the girls participating in the program.

"I think it's a good thing for young kids to get involved with the community and teach them what to do in life," said the mother, a cousin of Keith's. "It keeps them out of the street."

Amber Richards, a Gainesville High School junior, said she believes the training could help her in a couple of ways - communication skills and how to carry herself, as she plans on becoming a model.

"It's a great experience," she said. "I hope I'll learn something from it as I grow up."