Voices

Challenge Day: a tool that can help cultivate community

BRATTLEBORO — Our recent current events, our current White House administration, and our federal Republican congressional “civil servants” all point to the dismal fact that we, everyday citizens, have failed in the education of our young, especially our young men.

At this time of heightened public energy and intention for a better future, I suggest we focus some of this momentum on improving how we nurture our young, that they might become whole, healthy human beings with compassionate regard for others.

As a grandmother, I wish for our young to learn that real men hold women in high regard with respect and intention to protect and provide for those who might be vulnerable.

I wish for our young to learn the value of women as intelligent, capable, creative, and valuable carriers of intuitive wisdom as well as life. Women know what is needed, even though our voices are often ignored.

I wish for our young to learn that those different from us have something to offer us, as we have something to offer them. We can learn from one another and grow, expand who we are.

I wish for our young to learn that life is a collaborative adventure, not a competition. Men can learn from women's perspective, knowledge, and wisdom. All people together, women and men, can act cooperatively with one another and in harmony with Earth's many systems to create a life-sustaining future of our collective intentional design.

How do we get “there” from “here” in this “valley of the great divide”? In an age of public lies and media/government manipulation?

Challenge Day offers a social- and emotional-learning program of interactive experiences geared to open students/participants to their own inner wisdom, to their own sense of connection, of wholeness, of power and success in taking responsibility, to help people become an integral and important part of the greater whole of our community.

I want to bring Challenge Day to the Brattleboro area and now offer my help and energy to school administrators, to the school board, to local service groups and churches who may also be interested in bringing the hope and wholeness of this program to our youth and future.

The Challenge Day program offers hope to us here. Let's make a positive change for Brattleboro, a change we can be proud of.

Thank you, on behalf of the young growing up in our wake,

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