Covid-19 Has Forced Us to Cancel The Crazy Like A Fox Event. We've Found Another Way to Support You.
It is with deep regret that I release this statement on behalf of Stronger Than My Struggles, STMS Cares and Melony Hill Enterprise. Over the course of the past few weeks, we have watched our world change dramatically. No matter where you live, your daily lifestyle has been altered by Covid-19.
America has suffered deaths in numbers that we haven’t seen since the Black Plague. The economical impact is worst than both the Great Depression and 9/11. In the last week, 6.6 million Americans have applied for unemployment. Schools and businesses have been ordered closed until further notice.
At the beginning of March, I reached out to our tribe to convey the message that our weekly writing workshop would be canceled until further notice and that we had changed our tour to a 2-day conference here in Baltimore. Since that announcement, so much more has happened. We have schools that have been dismissed for the rest of the year; many states are on a stay at home order and we’ve seen major businesses, including the airlines, crumble. If it’s any indication of when we will be able to return to normalcy, Virginia is shut down through June.
We rescheduled our Crazy Like A Fox event for July, securing a hotel downtown. The hotel is very close to the convention center where they are now setting up a field hospital for patients when the hospitals overflow. The hotel is asking Me for tentative dates, it’s not looking good for a July event, as we look around the country, we see that others have decided the same. Two major events scheduled for July, the Essence Festival and The Preakness both have been rescheduled for fall and winter. I refuse to keep rescheduling an event knowing that the people we work with not only suffer anxiety, but I can not with integrity, hold on to money of those who have invested in this event. I recognize that since signing up to speak or vend at this event, that much has changed.
The airlines have said that when they are able to get back to running in some kind of normal manner, that they will have higher fares, less flights and less destinations. The CDC indicates that even after the first wave of Covid-19 passes, that we will still need to practice social distancing, furthermore, they’re predicting a second wave in the fall.
Thinking of our speakers and expected attendees, we cannot, in good conscious, continue to plan and postpone this event every time the situation in our state and across the U.S. changes. Anyone who has invested in this tour turned conference, has had their funds reimbursed. All refunds were issued over the weekend and should take 5-7 business days to hit your account. You were refunded via whatever method of payment used at the time of registration. If you should need proof of your refund, feel free to contact Me at info@strongerthanmystruggles.com and a member of the team will get that to you via email.
We will be doing a weekly Facebook live series starting April 9, 2020, as well as bringing our weekly writing workshop online and I am planning to interview as many of the speakers that we had lined up as possible, to still share their stories and resources with our global community.
Please bear with us as we adjust to the changes that we’ve been faced with battling this deadly disease. More importantly, please take care of yourself and your loved ones. Be safe and REMEMBER, I’m Stronger Than My Struggles and YOU are too!
Melony Hill
Founder, Stronger Than My Struggles
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