Annie Ashmore, a sophomore at U.C. Davis, has been volunteering to lobby and raise funds and awareness about human rights issues in Uganda and the Central African Republic since 2009. This summer, she was able to travel to Uganda for the first time and work directly in a village school and orphanage. In this talk, she will discuss her work, its challenges, and her plans for further work in the Kampala area.
Research shows that enhancing creativity improves our well-being. Getting the creative juices flowing lessens anxiety, boosts physical and mental health, and makes us better problem solvers. This interactive talk will present seven keys to unlock creativity based on a unique blend of psychology, Eastern philosophies, and success stories from the speaker’s workshops over the past 18 years. Participants will learn how to hone their creative skills, reduce stress, gain greater life-work balance, and lead more fulfilling healthier lives. (See www.michellechappel.com)
American women comprise no more than 25% of the decision-makers across sectors in the US (e.g., corporate boards and executives, the US Congress, law firm partners).
The U.S. ranks well below many industrialized nations when it come to the status of women and policies that support them.
Why does that matter and what is the U.S. losing by failing to support the advancement of women? What would the country gain if women were full partners in all aspects of work and civic life?
Mary V. Hughes is a political strategist, author, and the architect of the Close the Gap CA campaign, www.closethegapca.org.
Tom Bergstrom, a Humanist Community member will share important things in his life in this talk. He grew up in a blue collar town of 78,000 in southeast Wisconsin as a practicing Catholic. As a child he was mostly interested in riding his bike fast, and then later developed an interest in world events. However, in his teens he became ill.
For years during Tom’s teens, his best friend used fear tactics to challenge Tom to join the friend’s church. When Tom was 18, he finally joined his friend’s small modest conservative Church Of Christ. After eight years in the Church of Christ or the “C of C”, Tom found out that he could preach. His short preaching career began in his 20’s and lasted a few years from 1991 to about 1994. By 1999 he went through a divorce which led to a new discovery on Christian hypocrisy.
About this he says, “This hypocrisy opened my eyes. I educated myself about philosophy, Taoism, Buddhism, evolution, US history, particle physics, and other sciences. This new education eventually led me to become agnostic. At the same time as I was becoming progressive, American politics was becoming more conservative. Thus, I remembered my old Bible training which taught that there is a big difference between basic Jesus’ saying to love your neighbor and with right-wing American Christian propaganda. The right-wings’ lying rhetoric in the name of Jesus encouraged me to write, blog, protest, join socialists, join humanists, and to expose conservative right-wing American Christians’ hypocritical propaganda. I hope to open your eyes to the magnitude of the false Christian hypocrisy I have seen.”
