Satellite Community Dialogue on Resilience and Coping with Challenges of Modern Life to be Held at Colorado State

An exploration of ways to cope with emerging global and local issues such as pollution, population growth, Y2K and other challenges will take place via satellite broadcast between more than 100 communities throughout the United States and Canada.

Local citizens will gather in Room 207 Lory Student Center at Colorado State University to participate in the broadcast, which will take place from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. May 27.

The interactive video conference, "Making Meaning: A Challenge for the New Century," will feature special guests including well-known author and activist Vicki Robin, celebrated musician and poet Rachel Bagby and recognized author and speaker Robert Theobald.

"Making Meaning" is the third video conference in a trilogy of satellite broadcasts designed to bring people together to talk about the issues of fundamental change and to explore the need to make deeper meaning in the contexts of both individual and community lives. The satellite series provides an opportunity for interactive dialogue among diverse community representatives. Participation enhances the public’s ability to understand and cope with emerging global challenges. Time will be set aside for local discussion before and after the broadast for participants to engage in immediate, in-site dialogue.

Robert Theobald has worked as a speaker and author in social change for 40 years. He is a cancer survivor and developed this series of programs to provide periodic discussion about the directions in which our culture is moving and how we can take more control. He is author of "Reworking Success."

Vicki Robin, who the New York Times called the "prophet of consumption-downsizers," is a key voice in the voluntary simplicity movement. She is co-author of the national bestseller "Your Money or Your Life," and president of the New Road Map Foundation, offering tools for shifting to low-consumption, high-fulfillment lifestyles.

Rachel Bagby, author of "Divine Daughters," joins the dialogue with her gifts as a vocal artist, writer and ecologist.

All three guests have been celebrated widely in international media from the Wall Street Journal to ABC’s "Good Morning America."

For more information or to register for the program, contact Sandy Tracy at The Family and Youth Institute, (970) 491-6358. Videotapes of each program in the series are available for $27 each or $75 for all three, and can be ordered through Northwest Regional Facilitators’ Resilient Communities Project. The Web address is http://www.resilientcommunities.org . Videotapes also may be borrowed through Colorado State University by calling Sandy Tracy.

The program is co-produced by Northwest Regional Facilitators, a Spokane, Washington non-profit community organizing agency, and Washington State University Cooperative Extension. The local host is The Family and Youth Institute, a collaboration between the College of Applied Human Sciences and Colorado State University Cooperative Extension.