A great day!! - Hispanic Marriage Day / Ladies Home Journal, Again! / Missouri / Donations - 5/22/08

Thu May 22 14:15:47 EDT 2008

- TAH DAH!!: ANNOUNCING HISPANIC MARRIAGE DAY: OCT 12, 2008
- WE SCORE AGAIN!! ROBREDO MAKES LADIES HOME JOURNAL
- OPERATION US: WONDERFUL WEBSITE
- DONATIONS: MAKE YOUR DAY

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- TAH DAH!!: ANNOUNCING HISPANIC MARRIAGE DAY: OCT 12, 2008

The very first annual Hispanic Marriage Day will be celebrated Oct 12,
2008!!   

Join us for our first planning meeting for the big nationwide launch.
Everyone is invited, especially anyone organizing a community or
congregational marriage-strengthening initiative.  Oct 12 is just around the
corner, so it's time to start planning NOW!!

To get started, join us for the first organizational meeting at the Smart
Marriages Conference Fri July 4 at 7:30am at the Hispanic Roundtable. We
will share plans for how churches, community groups, families and couples
can plan their celebration. The Hispanic Marriage Day celebration was
scheduled for the last Sunday of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept 15 - Oct 15,
2008) to provide the opportunity to wrap-up the month's festivities with vow
renewal ceremonies, graduations from marriage-strengthening classes, and
dances, cook outs, and celebrations, etc. This also provides a wonderful
opportunity to showcase the many Marriage Education resources available in
Spanish at Marriage Resource Fairs and to invite the support of the Hispanic
business community. Strong marriages make strong communities!  At the
roundtable we'll brainstorm ideas about resources, PR, and the new website.
Watch the Smart Marriages list for announcements about the website launch
and how you can sign up to host a Hispanic Marriage Day 2008 event in your
city. Get listed so others in your area can contact you.

We thank Nisa Muhammad, founder of the highly successful Black Marriage Day,
for her incredible generosity in sharing her experience, wisdom and
resources.  

For more information or to send your ideas and suggestions, contact Enid
Reyes-Harvey enid.reyes at anthemnorthtexas.org 972-824-4037 or Edixon Martinez
edixon at sacmarriage.org 916-443-3434.

There is no need to register for the Hispanic Roundtable, just show up.  The
roundtable meets Thurs, Fri, and Sat morning at 7:30am in Imperial Ballroom
A.     

For other roundtables and networking events, see:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/roundtables.html

As it says, bring coffee and a breakfast sandwich....or would that be a
burrito?  - diane 

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- WE SCORE AGAIN!!  ROBREDO MAKES LADIES HOME JOURNAL

Our very own dynamo, Katherine Robredo, is featured in the current (June)
issue of Ladies Home Journal in the classic "Can This Marriage be Saved?"
column.  I say "our very own dynamo" because Katherine is one of the few who
attended the very first Smart Marriages conference way back in 1997 and has
been presenting a variety of topics since 1999 including her "dynamo"
over-the-top, high-energy, Warm It Up! workshop that has received such great
reviews at Smart Marriages the past few years.  It's one of the sessions
that gets the "You MUST bring them back" evaluations. Trust me, they do
"warm things up!"  This year I'm putting them in their own ballroom with
soundproof walls.  

> 310 - Thurs, July 2, 2:15pm
> Warm Things Up!
> Katherine Robredo, MSW, Maureen Griner, MA
> You've taken the classes, now learn to be a great presenter with 20 icebreaker
> activities to enliven any class and enhance group learning. Plus tips on adult
> learning styles and dealing with difficult people.

For other workshops in the "play" track - it's nice move around, laugh out
loud, and learn while you play, or to send your non-marriage-professional
spouse to these sessions...see:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/play.html

And, HOW DO YOU GET featured in Ladies Home Journal?  Both Dave Carder and
Katherine Robredo (last month and this month's LHJ issues) say it was from
being listed on the Smart Marriages Resource Directory that got them
noticed. 

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- OPERATION US: WONDERFUL WEBSITE!

Check out this great, entertaining, useful website that lives up to the
motto on the site: "Marriage and Relationship Education You Can Use!" Make
me so proud to see that they've taken so many of the Resources showcased in
the 2007 Smart Marriages TOOLS OF THE TRADE Showcase plenary and put them to
work on their site - videos, the Power of Two Relationship Games, etc etc.
BE sure to attend this year's TOOLS OF THE TRADE PLENARY on Friday July 4 at
12:45pm for an incredible show and tons of free tools and ideas.

Bravo Jennifer Baker on your website! Bravo Healthy Marriage Project of
Southwest Missouri!

http://www.operationus.org/

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- DONATIONS: MAKE YOUR DAY

> Dear Diane,
> I thought I'd pass along an idea. I had 250 sets of audio tapes of two of my
> books (Making Love Stay and The Monogamy Myth). Since everything is on CD
> these days, I long ago stopped selling the audio tapes, and they were just
> sitting in a closet.
> 
> I  decided that a local military base (where I did volunteer work years ago)
> might make good use of them. So I donated all the audio tapes (along with
> about 30 copies of some of the books) to the Family Services office of the
> Marine Corps Recruit Depot here in San Diego. They were extremely pleased to
> get the material - and it made my day!
> Peggy Vaughan
> peggy at dearpeggy.com

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12th Annual Smart Marriages® Conference, Hilton San Francisco Hotel,
June 30-July 6, 2008  (General Conference July 2-5)
Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 30-July 2
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 6
DOWNLOAD a conference brochure and register at:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/download.brochure.html

List your program and resources on the Directory of Classes at
http://www.smartmarriages.com/directory_browse.html

Order conference audio & video CD/DVD/MP3s: 800-241-7785 or
http://www.iPlaybackSmartMarriages.com

Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
5310 Belt Rd NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961
http://www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332