Friday, November 24, 2017

New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project Announces New Gender Gap Bridge-Building Support Network!

New Horizons is moving into action, intent on bridging the gender gap!

Over Thanksgiving we asked ourselves -

How Are The Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood Scandals And The #Metoo Movement Going To Effect Our Community? 

And what can we do to reach the high barre on this?

Here is how we answered (Because we know the ropes on this one, read on to give yourself a holiday lift if all this scandal chaos is intruding!) -- 

Our first steps will be on the local level, in Frederick County, Maryland.  Once we have some traction there, we will be open to coming to your community, as organizers and facilitators. 

Perhaps, even sooner as we are discovering that we can do some of the programs we have planned for Frederick via conference call.  WOW!

Wherever you are, we are ready to assist you, your family, friends and business or organization associates with crisis management, moving through the cultural upheaval of women and men that we now have at hand.

Please join us as we do our utmost to overcome gender polarization at this time, assisting men and women to move from debating the #MeToo issues at hand and learning to better understand one another!

This is crisis turned into opportunity! 

Also see Anastasia The Storyteller’s posts on how Anastasia is addressing the fallout from the cultural tsunami fallout and escalating potential for male-female polarizing, out of the Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood sexual harassment and abuse scandals.

Note 11/27/18: On December 22, 2017 -- Anastasia (me) discovered a cache of documents that led to her making a formal Ethics Complaint against a psychiatrist mentor of hers for sexual harassment and serious power abuse. This resulted in Anastasia's having a #MeToo ordeal of her own throughout most of 2018. You can read some of the details of this saga here.

Here’s a rough draft of our plan, as it is to be announced in the coming weeks.

News Update! 
For release: December 10, 2017

How Are The Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood Scandals And The #Metoo Movement Going To Effect Our Community?

The New Horizons Support Network – and – our partnering organizations want to know!

None of us are far removed from these recent events, in Frederick County and everywhere else throughout this country (fill in the blank with your locale), as to not be impacted by them – in our work lives and in our personal lives. There are culture wide-challenges coming out of these events that New Horizons and its Small “Zones of Peace” Initiative are uniquely equipped to address. 

(We are presently awaiting copyright permission from one of Washington, D.C.’s major newspapers, on a feature article that showcases just how expert we are in this area, before we spill on our full qualifications in this area! When you find out more, you are likely to be impressed! And we won’t mind). 

Here’s our scoop. We are hoping you will contribute your perspectives and ideas for problem solving and referrals to help us develop a strategy to tend to these issues. 

And, of course, given that we are a non-profit organization, 501 C (3), we will always welcome your time, talent and treasures. (We now take gifts in kind, as donations, that can be resold on ebay.)

In the service of healing ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences in adult female, survivors (or more recent sex harassment/abuse traumas, not involving domestic violence or other crisis management such as individual therapy) needs, showing up, more intensely, at this time, our intentions are to provide the following 


Support, Education, Dialogue, Empowerment, Compassion and Consciousness Raising, Storytelling

In the service of bridging the gender gap, our intentions are to provide the following to women and men committed to growing towards one another (not a substitute for individual or couples counseling) --


Support, Education, Dialogue, Consciousness and Compassion Raising, Storytelling Exchanging

Here’s our back story

In 1987 (See Washington Times article, March 4, 1987) New Horizons, the non-profit organization, sponsoring the Small "Zones of Peace" initiative, launched a city-wide support network on relationship and personality addictions, with ongoing groups throughout the D.C. area and in Frederick County. 

This network provided support groups, individual and group therapy and monthly retreat weekends, focusing on treating relationship problems (i.e. co dependency, traditionally female addictions ) and personality addictions, especially addictions to power, money, status, lust, righteousness and control, traditionally male addictions).

(Again We are presently awaiting copyright permission from one of Washington, D.C.’s newspapers, The Washington Times, on a feature article that showcases our expertise in this area, before we spill on just how qualified we are in this area!). 

The program ran for close to twenty years, with ongoing support groups, educational programs and weekend training seminars and retreats. In doing this, we effected change in the lives of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who participated in our various programs, or those who were impacted, peripherally, by our approach. Our unique methodology saved lives, healed relationships and transformed countless individuals, couples and families.

Toward the end of its run, the program diminished, as Anastasia Rosen-Jones, our Executive Director and Founder, lost her eyesight and needed a long-term sabbatical. (See Anastasia’s bio and additional background information.

Moving Forward

The New Horizons Support Network is pledged to now bring its innovative support network approach out of cold storage, prompted by the Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood sex harassment and abuse scandals and the societal tsunami it has brought about.

Here is how we intend to put this renewal plan into motion –

Information gathering - the design of a feasibility study on how best to proceed in our local community (our identified small “zone of peace”) is now underway. Interviewees needed. 

We will even assist you in telling and recording your stories, if appropriate for you – and archiving them in the StoryCorps Library of Congress/Official New Horizons Small "Zones Of Peace" Storytelling Collection,  on related topics to this present issue we are now addressing, if it will help your healing;

Updated support network approach  -- now being assessed, intending to meet present needs. Partnering individuals, groups and organizations are needed;

Timeline: We are hoping to have our new, upgraded support network structure ready for public participation sometime in March.


Please contribute to this effort! We need your support and help!

Contact Anastasia for details at: 

SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com or Cell: 240.409.5347

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Update: Storytelling Workshop Series.

The New Horizons Small "Zones of Peace" Storytelling Workshop Series 
In the service of affecting social change

November 11, and December 2, 2017 Workshops  
Rescheduled

Instead, arrangements are now underway to take our next storytelling workshop series events to Hood College, as well as to other project sites. See a list below of what we have in the works for this critically important, community development project, the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace Project Storytelling Workshop Series.

Look for details and read our many articles on our unfolding Storytelling Workshop Series

These are troubling times! Nonetheless, along with our rights to freedom of speech, a free press, to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances these, we have the right to tell our stories – and – to listen to the stories of others. From storytelling – and story “listening,” we gain insight, inspiration, connection, new found levels of wisdom and creative solutions to problems we are presently facing.


Participate in creating and supporting New Horizons StoryCorps/Small “Zones of Peace” Library of Congress collection.  

Your opportunity to have your personal story archived (and those of your friends, family and other associates). We'll show you how!  

What we have in the works 
  • Storytelling (along with an introductory Coffee House Conversation program) to be added to the list of coming activities at a seniors’ community;
  • A pending project to bring storytelling, as a unifying activity, possibly focusing on the gender divide, at Hood College and on other campus sites;
  • A storytelling project geared to drawing out stories of female, adult Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), specially designed to empower and support women with healing and integrating trauma, some long hidden, from situations such as the Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood scandal has unloosed. Study in progress for data gathering on this. Contact Anastasia;
  • A pending project for our local community to gather stories from our key leaders, political and ordinary citizens;
  • A project to arrange Storytelling Holiday Workshop Parties (2 slots still available)
A great start, dontcha think? We sure do!


New Horizons is a 501 C 3  non-profit educational organization 
Partnering with StoryCorps’ “Listening Is An Act Of Love” Project

Please support our project with your donations. We take cash and gifts in kind!

For Details, Contact: Anastasia Rosen-Jones
Email: HarpersFerryNH@aol.com Cell: 240.409.5347

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Can Storytelling Be A Vehicle For Resolving Social Problems?


I have already written, some, about the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” newly refined agenda to shift our attentions away from community dialogue, as we had been doing for years with our Coffee House Conversations programs, to an intention to focus more on one-on-one dialogue.

Using our partnering with Storycorps, as a backdrop, we have, now, beginning with our Storytelling Workshop Series, live and online, launched this new plan over the past month. 

Our introductory pathway was about strengthening bonds, designed primarily for our local community. Following up on the countless things we learned in the process of teaching skills to attendees, in our live workshop, we moved our storytelling project forward with a mission of utilizing storytelling as a viable vehicle for resolving many and varied social problems beyond that. 
We all have lots to learn ---
from one another.


As a result an overview of programs we are currently developing includes these items –
  • Storytelling (along with an introductory Coffee House Conversation program) to soon be added to the list of activities at a seniors community;
On this item, ask yourselves –

Might we take up the gender gap with storytelling on college campuses?  We think we're gonna give it a try!

Might you, personally, like us to, also, bring this project to your college campus and help you begin setting up your own StoryCorps platform? 

Imagine what it might be like to have your college campus have its own StoryCorps archives, with your voices and stories, preserved for perpetuity!
  • A storytelling project geared to drawing out stories of female, adult Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), specially designed to empower and support women with healing and integrating sexual harassment and abuse trauma experiences, some long hidden, from situations such as the Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood scandal has unloosed;

  • A pending project for our local community to gather stories from our key leaders, political and otherwise;
  • A project, now in motion, for me, personally, to collect stories from neighbors, living in the magical locale we share up in the mountains above Harpers Ferry.  (A great way, possibly, to pass through the cold winter weather that sometimes makes driving difficult up here and, maybe, walking a little less so.)
  • A pending project to arrange one or two Storytelling Holiday Workshop Parties
Sounds like a great start, right?  

Especially for a building small “zones of peace” project officially, launched slightly only a month ago!  

We are on our way and thought you might like to know about our progress!

See how our storytelling approach can work? 

Each and every one of these projects has direct tie-ins to an intent to elevate some social difficulties out of the problem area into the possible. Such as bringing seniors, living in community with many new people they may never have known in their earlier years, to grow their new community bonds stronger.

Your family, friends, neighborhood, group or organization can do it too!

Keep in mind that "An enemy is someone whose story you haven't yet heard."

What turns the enemy situation around? Storytelling, of course!

We will be glad to guide your unique efforts.

For details, Contact: Anastasia Rosen-Jones

Email: SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com,  Cell: 240.409.5347