64 results for tag: diversity
Citizens Proejct Response to Colorado Springs Anti-Refugee Resolution
On March 7, 2016 Colorado Springs Council Member Pico presented a resolution "declaring opposition the the relocation of refugees from the United States Refugee Resettlement Program to the City of Colorado Springs." Citizens Project was quick to respond by contacting every Council Member to express deep concern. The resolution is not currently on the City Council Agenda, which is a small success. We look forward to being an important part of a needed community conversation about how to best welcome and resettle refugees in our community.
The following letter to the editor was published in The Gazette on March 11, 2016.
Since our inception, ...
VIDEO: Citizens Project Vision for the Future, 2015
This video was featured at the June 2015 Creating Community Breakfast. Featuring interviews from Jody Alyn, Don DeAngelis, Alison Garscadden, Bernie Herpin, Rosemary Lytle, Mary Lou Makepeace, Jan Martin, and Jariah Walker. Citizens Project is excited to be a vital part of the future of the Pikes Peak region!
We invite you to be a part of OUR future!
Hard Work and Affecting Change: A Springs Thing
By Anya Arndt
As many of you may know, I am leaving Citizens Project after 15 amazing and rewarding months on staff. At the end of this month, I will be embarking on a journey to spend a year (and maybe more) working in Beirut, Lebanon. It has long been a goal of mine to spend time living and working in the Middle East to expand my own knowledge appreciation of different cultures and ways of life in the world. I am excited for this adventure, but sad to leave my current position; but before I go, I’d like to share with you a little bit about my time here at CP.
When I first came to Citizens Project as an intern in the summer of 2012, I ...
Becoming Whole
By Sarah Musick
I had a lovely childhood. I sincerely did. My parents were hardworking, god-fearing, loving people with big imaginations. They taught my siblings and I that “If you can dream it, you can find a way to make it happen.” They took the twenty acres my grandfather gave them and built a stunning log cabin. It took them five years to complete. They cut 115 straight, tall, poplar trees to build our home.
In hindsight, they wanted their children to be like those poplar trees. Straight. And tall.
I aspired to follow in the footsteps of my father and my father’s father and become a Southern Baptist preacher. I couldn’t because I ...
We Are Not So Separate
A poem by Emma Brachtenbach
Last night, I slept upon the springtime, mountain ground and thought about the universe.
Under the ancient constellations I pondered the possibilities of sacredness and secular creation and my mind just wouldn't stop turning.
Like how beautiful would it be if god was genderless and endlessly gendered all at once because then religion could be constructed as truly all encompassing. More than bodies and how we can compartmentalize human beings.
And what if the earth was our original mother: heart beat ringing beautifully every time a new soul slipped from the dark womb of the mother who made us into the light and ...
Creating Community Breakfast Raises over $51,000
More than 500 community members gathered to create community and celebrate diversity at Citizens Project’s tenth annual Creating Community Breakfast. The breakfast highlighted the work Citizens Project is doing in the Pikes Peak region to promote equal rights, diversity, and religious freedom through separation of church and state, and civic engagement.
This event raised over $51,000 in general operating support for Citizens Project’s many programs including: candidate survey voter guides, its monthly publication Citizens Project Online News, and the Citizens Project Activist Network, which currently serves over 1,500 subscribers. Corporate ...
Citizens Project Mid-Year Update
Earlier this year we asked you, our loyal friends and supporters, to give us feedback about our work and impact. Thanks to the participation of 100 Citizens Project supporters, we learned a lot about our organization, including our strengths and our challenges. One of the opportunities for growth we identified was communication: we learned that we could be doing a better job of keeping you posted on all our programs and successes. To that end, we happily present this mid-year report of exactly what Citizens Project has been up to:
Collaborating with the Pikes Peak Equality Coalition: On February 14, we worked closely with member organizations of ...
It’s a Springs Thing.
Citizens Project launched an awareness campaign this week that simultaneously highlights the strides made in the areas of diversity, equality, religious freedom, and civic engagement and invites participation in creating a more inclusive community.
The awareness campaign is designed to be aspirational: shifting the conversation about the Colorado Springs community to highlight its successes rather than call attention to its deficits.
The campaign includes billboards, social media, print, and online ads, and was made possible through the generosity of Lunchbucket Creative, Lamar Outdoor Advertising, the Colorado Springs Independent, and ...
Language Matters
By Kristy Milligan
A few weeks ago, I shared lunch with a close friend, who also happens to be a Citizens Project donor, volunteer, committee member, and former board member.
When it was my turn to give a work update, I droned on for several minutes on about our organizational priorities and calendar for the next few months. My friend paused, considered and asked the most simple, profound question.
“What does all that actually mean?”
Most cultures, ranging from ethnic to geographic to professional specialty, adopt a particular vernacular to describe the world around them. That specialized vernacular appears in the form of acronyms, ...