Loekie Morales Visits Chicks and the City Rotterdam Season Ending Event

SINT MAARTEN/THE NETHERLANDS - On July 15th, Chicks and the City (CATC) Rotterdam held a season-ending reception at the KINO cinema in Rotterdam. For 20 years, Chicks and the City Rotterdam has been the leading media platform in Rotterdam for girls' and youth participation, creating features and content in various media, live and online.

CATC organizes activities and conducts research for and by girls—and anyone interested in this world. Girls' empowerment is a common thread throughout all their projects. In 2004, Natasja Morales conceived the concept of Chicks and the City, a girls' radio program as a participatory project in Rotterdam.

Her idea was simple, powerful, and effective: create a radio program in which young girls are involved and responsible for the production of a live radio show. They discuss everything—from serious content to humorous content—while simultaneously learning all the ins and outs of live media production.

The CATC concept is timeless. At a young age, the girls are exposed to various media, where they discover their own active role, including taking ownership, feeling represented, making their voices heard, and realizing their voices are being heard.

The productions also reach other young people who, like them, struggle with questions and issues that are part of their daily lives. This gives everything an extra boost. Natasja Morales, Founder & Artistic Director, and Katja Nootenboom, Business Director, presented exclusive on-screen previews of two new Fierce Forward podcast episodes at the season closing reception.

These featured powerful stories of Rotterdam girls and women, commemorating 50 years of women's emancipation. The women were interviewed in a small pink, mobile Canta car. Miss Loekie Morales, chair of the Dutch Caribbean St. Maarten’s Beyond Kultura Events Foundation, was one of the invited guests.

As a supporter of SDG 3, ‘Women Empowerment’, one of the 17 UN Development Goals, she wholeheartedly supports these kinds of initiatives. "The Dutch Caribbean Islands are working hard to achieve this global goal. There are many roads that lead to Rome. Yet, it's also useful to adopt each other's good examples, the best practices in our Kingdom," she says.

In the Fierce Forward series, the CATC girls interview various women, such as Lilian Alibux, director of Oxfam Novib, and Hanan El Fizazi, entrepreneur of Pretty Curly Girl, about their careers.

For example, "Woman & Entrepreneur" of CATC takes a look at the challenges businesswomen face on their path to success. What prevents women from reaching the top?

What is the current state of women's emancipation in Rotterdam? What positive changes have been implemented? Where can we still make progress? And why awards like "Businesswoman of the Year" are still necessary.

This episode both inspires and challenges. Despite fewer opportunities, women are no less ambitious. The Rotterdam-Rijnmond Ombudsman, Ms. Marianne van den Anker, was also interviewed.

She focuses on restoring trust when problems arise between residents or business owners and their municipality. Her motto is "identify problems in an early stage and respond appropriately."

Chicks And The City also offers media experience workshops at school and on-site. Students also regularly participate in CATC workshops, where they learn all about media and develop media skills.

Chicks And The City also offers media experience workshops for organizations and companies. These are typically one-time, 2.5-hour workshops where colleagues collaboratively develop a topic, delve deeper, and learn the basics of creating a podcast or vidcast (video podcast).

This workshop is also frequently used for team building at companies and institutions. The CATC Young Talent Award offers young women at CATC in Rotterdam the opportunity to submit their creative ideas for projects, (media) productions, or initiatives.

The winner will have the unique opportunity to bring their plan to life with the CATC team. Together with partners from the region, CATC aims to create a broad network within which opportunities and possibilities arise for young people to participate in society in all kinds of areas (culture, work, education, leisure, politics, etc.).

Beyond Kultura Events Foundation has expressed interest and is exploring a potential collaboration with Chicks and the City for the benefits in our Kingdom.

Interested? Feel free to email CATC at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. For more information, visit https://www.chicksandthecity.nl/zakelijk/

The audio and video podcasts can be listened to and watched: videos on Instagram and TikTok: @chicksandthecity and on the website: https://www.chicksandthecity.nl/category/videos/ Audio podcasts: https://www.chicksandthecity.nl/category/luister-show-terug/

Natasja Morales, Founder & artistiek directeur and Katja Nootenboom, business director of Chicks And The City (right) and Loekie Morales chair lady of Beyond Kultura Events Foundation (left), standing in front of the pink mobile Canta car.