Conference FAQs | Grant aims to keep marriages strong - 7/17/07

[Smartmarriages]

- I'M ALREADY GONE. . . .
- WHEN WILL SAN FRANCISCO HILTON BEGIN ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS?
- HOW LONG WILL THE ON-LINE EVALUATION FORM BE AVAILABLE ON-LINE?
- WHEN CAN PRESENTERS EXPECT TO SEE THEIR EVALUATIONS?
- YOU USUALLY SEND EMAILS ABOUT WHICH RECORDINGS YOU LOVE.  WHY NO COMMENTS?
- PAIRS IN SOUTH FLORIDA

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- I'M ALREADY GONE. . . .
The newslist will be silent until August 6th. Enjoy the quiet. ;)  - diane

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- WHEN WILL SAN FRANCISCO HILTON BEGIN ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS?
I'll let the list know as soon as reservations open, but it won't be until
September at the earliest.  The rate will be $115 single/double plus tax.

- HOW LONG WILL THE EVALUATION FORM BE AVAILABLE ON-LINE?
The form will be on-line until July 31.  If you've tried and been
frustrated, try again. We're learning as we go and may have smoothed things
out.  If you don't want to evaluate the whole conference and don't need CEU,
you can HELP a lot by just give me the basics "What I liked, what I didn't
like, and suggestions for speakers/topics/format for 2008" - for the info
see: http://www.smartmarriages.com/evaluation.faqs.html

- WHEN CAN PRESENTERS EXPECT TO RECEIVE THEIR EVALUATIONS?
This is the first time we've done this on-line and Amedco is still working
on the reports.  I haven't even seen anything yet. I hope we can get
evaluations to presenters by the end of August.

- YOU USUALLY SEND EMAILS ABOUT WHICH RECORDINGS YOU LOVE.  WHY NO COMMENTS?
My Ipod died (I think from overuse!). I wasted a lot of time trying to get
it repaired. Gave up and bought a Nano. Love it and have just started
listening -- it feels like I've been in a desert, no stacks of written
evaluations to read and I went ten days without being able to listen to the
recordings. BUT I have heard from many of you about your favorite sessions.
So far, the two sessions that people report helped them the most with their
own relationships and marriages were John Gray's lunch keynote ("think of
your husband as emergency guy") and Tony Robbins  "marriage motivator" work
with the on-stage couple.  Both men and women have thanked me for those
sessions - say they were transformed.

> #757-008  Keynote, June 30
> Mars & Venus Collide: The New War of the Sexes
> John Gray, PhD
    
> #757-009 Keynote, June 30, 7pm
> Saturday Night Live!
> Ultimate Relationships
> Anthony Robbins

You can order these on MP3 downloads for only $9.95 each or order as CDs or
DVD videos at 800-241-7785 or at http://www.iplaybacksmartmarriages.com

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- PAIRS IN SOUTH FLORIDA
Grant aims to keep marriages strong
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
By Jamie Malernee
July 16, 2007 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Sheena Blissett sits across from her husband, arms
crossed, eyes narrow, face hard.

"You don't listen to me when I talk to you," she said. "You get mad at me
when I tell you how I really feel."

Next to the couple is a church pastor who has been leading them, and an
audience of about 20 people, through a marriage course that is supposed to
help couples communicate better and avoid divorce. What is unique about the
course is that it is free to the public, paid for by the federal government.

"It's a process," Lena Gillis said of the curriculum she teaches. "It will
work today, tomorrow and 10 years from now."

The wife in the audience huffs and stares her husband down. "You," she
declares, "don't have 10 years."

According to some statistics, the traditional family -- a married man and
woman and their children -- is dying. A third of the nation's children live
in a single-parent home, according to the U.S. census.

The Zoe-Life Christian Center is supposed to be an emergency room,
resuscitating troubled marriages and strengthening healthy ones during
six-week sessions open to the public. Participants range from newlyweds to
couples married for decades.

The church uses nonreligious relationship education material provided by the
PAIRS Foundation, a nonprofit group founded decades ago by Lori Gordon, a
family therapist who said she wanted to give average people tools to work on
their own relationships. PAIRS, which has taught classes throughout the
United States for years for a fee, applied for and won the government grant
for South Florida.

It will receive almost $1 million a year, for five years, to offer free
classes in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties at community centers
and faith-based groups, through which PAIRS also advertises.

As part of the course, couples listen to lecturers, make journal entries and
practice their listening and speaking skills. At the end, they are asked
fill out a questionnaire. Since the classes began this year, participants
have reported significant improvements in relationship quality, according to
an analysis by the University of Central Florida.

Despite this, government funding of pro-marriage measures has been
controversial, particularly among those who question the political motives
of Bush, chief proponent of the funding. The timing of Bush's main
announcement of the initiative in 2004 -- an election year, shortly after a
Massachusetts state court upheld gay marriage -- concerned many.

"Millions In Federal Funds Handed To Anti-Gay Groups," reported a gay news
Web site.

"If liberals had introduced this costly big-government social experiment,
conservatives would be outraged," wrote one commentator for the Cato
Institute, a libertarian think tank, "and they would be right."

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for Children and Families within the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, said his agency funds such classes
because research shows children from stable, healthy marriages do better.
"They are less likely to have emotional, behavioral problems, less likely to
have trouble at school, have drug and alcohol problems," he said.

Horn said government intervenes when marriages go sour -- for example, with
issues of child support or violence -- so it makes sense to put money into
prevention. He added that marriage can help ease poverty.

Avis Jones-DeWeever, program director with the nonprofit Washington,
D.C.-based Institute for Women's Policy Research, counters that if the
government wants to get people out of poverty, research shows the best
answer is a college education -- not marriage education.

"It's completely irresponsible," she said. "There have been cuts across the
board in poverty funding, and yet somehow we've found (millions of dollars)
to invest in marriage programs."

Gillis said the tactics she teaches helped save her marriage. In 2000,
Gillis and her husband, Senior Pastor Derrick Gillis, were about to divorce
after he committed adultery.

Then they got a phone call about the marriage course, asking if their
church, which has a largely black membership, would like to become a partner
with PAIRS, which was looking to reach out to that community as part of a
different government grant it had received focusing on families and
fatherhood.

The Gillises agreed and took the course. They say it changed their lives.

"I was able to get all my anger out, so I could feel the love ... again,"
Lena Gillis said. "I was able to forgive, I was able to speak and be heard."

Said her husband: "For the first time in my life, I was able to understand
the importance of physical closeness and emotional openness. I had not been
able to be emotionally open with my wife."

The couple reunited and, after two years of further study provided by PAIRS
for free, became PAIRS facilitators.

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12th Annual Smart Marriages Conference, Hilton San Francisco Hotel,
July 2 - 5, 2008  
Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 30-July 2
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 6

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Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
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http://www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332

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