Training Opportunity: Washington, D.C. Metro Area. Public Safety Chaplains Training Day. November 18, 2013

PUBLIC SAFETY CHAPLAINS TRAINING DAY - 2013

The COG Public Safety Chaplains Subcommittee

in collaboration with the

Joint Force Headquarters Military District of Washington

and the

Fairfax Community Chaplains

PRESENTS

“Death Notification – Suicide Awareness and Prevention”

… which will be held on Monday, November 18, 2013 here at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), 777 North Capitol Street, NE, Washington, DC  20002 in the COG 3^rd Floor Boardroom, beginning at 8:00 AM with the Meet And Greet and 9:00 AM Opening Prayer.  The training will close at approximately 4:00 PM.  Suicide Awareness and Prevention is a very important topic and the regional Public Safety and Military Chaplaincy participation is sought here at all levels. 

Additional Participation

                COG appreciates the gravity of this important work and the roles of all of our regional partners.  Due to the significance and magnitude of this subject matter, additional regional public safety partners will this year be invited to attend.  That being said, the seating capacity of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Board Room is 120.  Historically, we’ve had almost 100 chaplains at each of the events that we have held over the past seven (7) years.  As such, the public safety and military chaplains have been given priority for registration and you (chaplains) have until October 19^th (approximately one week) to register before the registration is made available to all other regional public safety responder partners.  After this window, all other regional public safety first responder partners will be invited to register, which may very well create the desired intent of having the COG Boardroom reach its full capacity.  Again, the topic is important! 

Public safety and military chaplains, get your registrations in soonest!  Suicide has gone up by huge proportions in the last two to three years and has been deemed one the nation’s growing epidemics.  Your knowledge base in this area is urgent indeed. 

SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKERS

            Special Guest Speakers for this event are:

1.      Dr. Robert E. Douglas, National P.O.L.I.C.E. Suicide Foundation, Inc.

Robert Douglas is a leading expert in the area of police suicide according to Dateline, CNN, Time Magazine, and USA Today.  He is also the author of four books:  Death with No Valor, Hope Beyond the Badge, Healing for a Hero’s Heart and soon to be published, The Art of Being You.  Bob served as US Marine, 25 years veteran of two police departments, 24 years as a pastor, and served several law enforcement agencies as a Chaplain.

2.      Commander Paul Anderson, Deputy Chaplain for Joint Plans and Operations, JFHQ, Fort McNair

Chaplain Anderson is an experienced Navy Chaplain and has served in myriad and diverse roles in the Navy and Marine Corps.  All military Chaplains are trained and many have participated in Casualty and Assistance Officer (CACO) calls.  In the course of his career, he has made 17 CACO calls.  Among them were victims of the attack on the USS Cole; victims of the attack on the Pentagon on 9-11 and the first Marine Corps casualty of the Global War on Terror in Afghanistan.  He helped to rewrite the curriculum for training CACO officers and wrote the script for several video vignettes.  Most recently Chaplain Anderson assisted in the Death Notification Process for a casualty of the massacre at the Navy Yard.

Chaplain Anderson began his training in Suicide Awareness and Prevention at the Meninger Clinic in Topeka Kansas.  He was certified by Meninger as a Master Trainer in 1998.  He has stayed current by attending annual training sponsored by the Army and the Navy.  He has augmented his training by adding Critical Incident Stress Management, Combat Operational Stress Control, and Hope Theory to his interventional quiver.”

These experts will provide you with the understanding of the subject, what you need to know, and how you as a chaplain or first responder clergy may offset or mitigate this ever growing suicide epidemic.

GUEST PANELISTS

            We will have a cadre of guest panelists who will be able to speak to this subject matter from different and varied perspectives.  You won’t want to miss this!

Thanks for all that you do to support the Public Safety Chaplaincy and Military Chaplaincy roles as well as the wonderful support you provide to the first responders, police, fire, emergency managers, health agencies and families, locally, regionally and nationally. 

UNDERWRITING

There is still an opportunity for you to participate in the underwriting of this event.  We could use your support.  If you would like to support the underwriting of this important event, you may contact me - Dennis Bailey directly at dbailey@mwcog.org.  

LUNCH

            Lunch will be on your own.  Union Station is close by and there are also several restaurants including Au Bon Pain and Subway immediately across the street.  Coffee and Donuts will be provided in the AM.

CERTIFICATES

            Certificates will be provided to all registrants who have registered at least one week in advance and who complete the training in its entirety.

REGISTRATION

            You may register by clicking HERE or going to the COG Website at www.mwcog.org and going to the Events Calendar.  Remember, Chaplains have approximately one week to register prior to an open registration to all first-responder partners.

This topic is very current and has large and significant implications.  Many of our local and regional public safety and military chaplains, first responders, (including public safety police and firemen, military soldiers, emergency medical technicians, and families and friends of those who commit suicide), find themselves having to deal with this kind of situation for which most often they are not prepared.  The national and regional suicide numbers are staggering. 

Please make every effort to be on hand for this important training.

World Bank Blog: Why Influencing Leaders Requires a Willingness to Hug a Porcupine

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/why-influencing-leaders-requires-willingness-hug-porcupine

World Bank Blogs

Why Influencing Leaders Requires a Willingness to Hug a Porcupine

SUBMITTED BY SINA ODUGBEMI ON THU, 10/03/2013

Let’s be clear about this: to successfully influence leaders, that is, to have your views, your suggestions, your criticisms of their actions and so on, be taken seriously by them, you are not allowed to cheat. Cheat and leaders will ignore you. Worse, they will treat you with contempt. Above all, you will deserve their contempt.

The subject is important because a fundamental part of producing change is the ability to influence leaders…the leaders of the organizations you need help from, and the leaders of government at different levels without whose support very little can get done. I know this suggestion flies in the face of the current romance of the streets, of the current idealization of grass roots mobilization using cool new tools that magically launch revolutions, and produce wondrously effective pro-poor social and political change.

Now, I am a great believer in active citizens but I also know that real change is delivered by effective coalitions, and people in leadership positions are at the very heart of effective coalitions. It is the classic Inside-Outside strategy: leaders in government and leaders in civil society collaborate (sometimes quietly because of the exigencies of power play) to produce change.

In another life, when I was a newspaper pundit and editorial opinion writer, a number of leaders I interacted with taught me a simple truth. They were trying to describe to me which newspaper editorials or writers they took seriously and why. They laid out the tests they applied as follows:

• Are you informed? Do you know what you are talking about?
• Are you aware of the complexity of the decision-making context that the leaders in the arena are facing?
• Do you factor that complexity into what you are proposing, or are you ignoring the complexity in order to fire off cheap shots, or urge upon them asinine courses of action?

They said to me that these tests are the reason leaders take very few activists, pundits and editorial opinions seriously.  But, you know, I firmly believe that similar tests are applied by leaders in different spheres of life…including where you work. Leaders everywhere, I am convinced, take very few people seriously.

The key lesson that I was taught is this: if you are informed, if you take on the complexity of the decision making context leaders are facing and still come to a different, perfectly feasible course of action, you will earn the respect and admiration of the leaders you are trying to influence, even if they don’t say so to you...or change course.

The reason for all this is simple. Leaders wrestle with complexity all the time. They have to embrace porcupines daily…and porcupines have those nasty erectile spines mingled with their body hair. Yet, these sorely pressed leaders often find that most of the people seeking to influence them, or those who simply blast them, are not interested in embracing porcupines.  They cheat. They simplify complex problems and then say: ‘It is simply really, Madame Prime Minister. Why don’t you do this or that?’

And why do people cheat? Because embracing complexity is hard; thinking is hard; and trade-offs are tough customers. It is a lot easier to cheat.

But leaders cannot cheat. They cannot duck complexity. They cannot avoid difficult trade-offs, competing principles, quarrelling allies, vicious enemies and so on.

I want to end with an example from the world of politics. In October 2012, the best-selling author, Michael Lewis, published a remarkable essay in Vanity Fair, the resultant of spending six months quietly shadowing President Barack Obama of the United States. The piece is titled ‘Obama’s Way’ and it contains the following glimpses into the realities of political leaders. Lewis quotes Obama saying:

1. “Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable. Otherwise someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made that decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.”
2. “You’ll see that I wear only gray or blue suits. I am trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I am eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

Now, just think about what it would take to impress and influence someone only a small part of whose reality we have just espied.

Photo Credit: Mary Harrsch
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GCC to set up common water grid

http://www.emirates247.com/business/energy/gcc-to-set-up-common-water-grid-2013-09-30-1.522864

Project to cost $10.5bn; desalination plants in Gulf of Oman

Published Monday, September 30, 2013

Gulf oil producers are planning to pump around $10.5 billion to set up a landmark common water supply grid to meet their fast growing consumption in the long run because of a rapid population growth and expanding non-oil sectors.

The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which are the world’s richest in oil but poorest in water, have agreed to set up giant desalination plants in Oman to use water from the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

The project involves large pipelines that will link all six members and supply them with desalinated water in case of shortages in their existing desalination plants in the Gulf.

The project includes three stages, the first of which will cost around $2.7 billion and involves linking regional countries with a pipeline network while the second phase will cost nearly $four billion to construct a plant in Sohar on Oman’s coastline overlooking both seas. The third phase includes the construction of another desalination station in Ashkhara in Oman at a cost of about $3.8 billion.

“This project is in line with a decision by the GCC heads of state at their meeting in Riyadh in mid 2012,” Bahraini Minister of Water and Electricity Abdul Mohsen bin Ali Mirza said in remarks published in regional newspapers.

He said a feasibility study bid has already been awarded to King Abdullah for Research and Strategic Studies in Saudi Arabia at a cost of SR12.5 million.

Officials said the project would rely on water from the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea outside the oil-rich Gulf to ease reliance on desalination plants in the Gulf due to rapid growth in consumption in member states.

In a recent study, a US research firm warned that regional states could face a serious water supply shortage because of a rapid growth in domestic demand due to a large increase in their population, steady expansion in their economies, the long summer season, and lack of awareness about rationalization of water consumption.

 “Excess water consumption has become a serious issue in the region. GCC residents and businesses have disregarded the consequences of their water usage to enjoy benefits more common in countries with ample rain and overflowing aquifers. But with the population of the GCC increasing in excess of two cent a year, it is a real challenge,” Booz & Company said.

According to the report, desalination station provides more than two-thirds of the potable water used in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, and will continue to play a huge role in the GCC’s water development efforts.

But it warned that desalination carries enormous economic and environmental costs. Despite a more than fivefold improvement in efficiency since 1979, the $one it costs to desalinate a cubic meter of seawater is still a relatively expensive way of producing potable water, it said.

“Moreover, seawater desalination is an energy-intensive process, consuming eight times more energy than groundwater projects, and accounting for between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of energy consumption in the GCC. This adds to the problems of energy intensity already plaguing the region,” it said.

The report estimated that GCC countries, which control 40 per cent of the world’s oil, would invest more than $100 billion in their water sectors between 2011 and 2016.

It said some of these investments will be in improved desalination technologies, which could involve solar energy or new ways of filtering out salt or making it evaporate.

A recent official study showed people in the UAE are the world’s largest water consumers, with the average per capita consumption standing at 364 litres per day, more than 82 per cent above the global average individual demand.

Demand for water in the UAE, the second largest Arab economy, totalled around 4.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2011 and is projected to nearly double to nine bcm in 2030 because of high consumption and population growth, said Mariam Hassan Al-Shanasi, undersecretary of the ministry of environment and water.

She estimated per capita water demand in the country at 364 litres per day compared with a global average of nearly 200 litres per day.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

Black Press Business/Economic Feature. Week of October 6, 2013

Black Press Business/Economic Feature                              Week of October  6, 2013

BUSINESS EXCHANGE

By William Reed

Get a Job

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs

When you were growing up, were the conversations at your house centered on concepts about business, or more along the line of “go get a job?”  Entrepreneurship is not a subject that is discussed regularly around the dinner table in African-American homes. There’s a lack of business traditions among African Americans and a paltry record of entrepreneurial successes.  Smaller probabilities of having self-employed parents, demographic trends and discrimination are primary reasons for the limited level of entrepreneurship in contemporary African-American communities.

American Blacks must cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit independent of politics and who occupies the White House.  The low historical rate of African American entrepreneurship is a well-known fact. The100-year-old, discrepancy between Black and White entrepreneurship levels could be eradicated within a few generations if more African Americans embraced and practicedentrepreneurship.  More Blacks have to get a better grasp of concepts such as capitalism and entrepreneurship.

Some Blacks equate capitalism to racism; but the truth is the free market system isn’t racist and is the best provider for Americans of all races. Capitalism is the social system under which the American economy operates. Under this structure, the means for producing and distributing goods (the land, factories, technology, transport system etc.) are owned by a small minority of people with a motive to make a profit.

Entrepreneurship is an employment strategy that can lead to economic self-sufficiency. Self-employment is a vital facet of the United States economy.  Entrepreneurship has been a means for the economic advancement of numerous ethnic groups.  Take note of most of the merchants in areas populated by Blacks. 

Ninety-nine times out of 100, Blacks patronize merchants that are from outside of our race.  Entrepreneurs drive America's economy and account for the majority of our nation's new job creation and innovations.  America's 25.8 million small businesses employ more than 50 percent of the private workforce, generate more than half of the nation's gross domestic product, and are the principal source of new jobs in the U.S. economy.

An entrepreneur is a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture. Although forms of business ownership vary by jurisdiction, several common forms exist: A sole proprietorship is a business owned by one person for-profit.  

A partnership is a business owned by two or more people. 

The three typical classifications of for-profit partnerships are general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships. A corporation is a limited liability business that has a separate legal personality from its members. 

Corporations can be government owned or privately owned, and corporations can organize either for-profit or not-for-profit.

Starting a business is a lot of work.  The hours are long, sacrifices are great and you are confronted with new problems and challenges every day.  The nature of being an entrepreneur means that you fully embrace uncertainty and are comfortable following your heart and intuition. Those who succeed do so because of their unwavering belief in the endeavor they have initiated.

What are you leaving your children? 

More Black parents need to be in a position that they can “leave the business” to their children. If we concentrated and worked hard, the 100-year-old discrepancy between Black and White entrepreneurship levels that many call “racist” could be eradicated.  More of us must embrace “Black Capitalism” to build wealth through the ownership and development of businesses.

 Prominent Black Capitalists include: Booker T. Washington, who was an early leader at theTuskegee Institute, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Robert Reed Church, a wealthy African American, founded the nation's first Black-owned bank in 1906, Solvent Savings. 

 - William Reed is publisher of “Who’s Who in Black Corporate America” and available for projects via theBaileyGroup.org

Training Opportunity: October 24, 2013. Hagerstown, Maryland. RAPID Psychological First Aid Training

RAPID~PSYCHOLOGICAL FIRST AID  The Johns Hopkins Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center and the DHMH Office of Preparedness and Response are pleased to offer the Johns Hopkins~RAPID Psychological First Aid Workshop. It is a 6-hour, interactive training that provides non-mental health professionals with the concepts and skills associated with Psychological First Aid. Utilizing the RAPID model (Reflective listening, Assessment of needs, Prioritization, Intervention, and Disposition), this specialized training provides perspectives on injuries and trauma that are beyond those physical in nature. Additionally, the RAPID model is readily applicable to public health settings, the workplace, the military, faith-based organizations, mass disaster venues, and even the demands of more commonplace critical events, e.g., dealing with the psychological aftermath of accidents, robberies, suicide, homicide, or community violence. DATE:  October 24, 2013 TIME:  9:00am - 4:00pm (registration begins at 8:00 am) LOCATION: Best Western Grand Venice Hotel, Hagerstown, MD 21740 ACCOMMODATIONS:  For those requiring overnight accommodations, a room rate of $65.90 is being offered. REGISTRATION:   https://trams.jhsph.edu/trams/index.cfm?event=training.catalogDisplay&trainingID=660 Additional Details Can Be Found Here:  http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-public-health-preparedness/training/calendar/index.html CONTACT INFORMATION:   Katurah Bland, 443-287-6735/kbland@jhsph.edu Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness 615 N. Wolfe Street, Room E7037 Baltimore, MD 21205 prepared@jhsph.edu -Or - Clifford Smith, 410-767-5266, clifford.smith@maryland.gov