agpa2009 announcement

[Adam Blatner]

 Forward from the ASGPP Forum: 


Dear Colleague:

The 2009 Annual Meeting of the AGPA will be held in Chicago at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers from February 16-21. Our theme for the meeting is "Strong Group Foundations: Building Lasting Communities." How apt our theme is for Chicago, a stunning, recreated city of the Midwest with notable and enduring architecture. At the turn of the century, groups within groups of political, business and social leaders rebuilt Chicago. For years, groups have come from all over the world to meet in Chicago with its vast, tailored spaces designed to host groups.

For a community to survive, what does it take? This is one of the questions we can ask at next year's meeting. At AGPA we have built a lasting and meaningful community with each other. 

>From our perspective, a community needs strong groups with leaders and members who can be open enough to listen to each other and to hold the curiosity that 'I' could be wrong. We learn by doing: good training makes good therapists, which makes strong group structures and foundations. We also believe that well-led groups encourage healthy individuality and cooperation, where stereotyping and demonizing of the other can be worked through and repaired. 

In today's world, communities all around need help in joining each other, getting strong and staying strong. We invite you to be part of the AGPA community at next year's Annual Meeting 
in Chicago by submitting proposals for Specific Institute Sections, Workshops or Open Sessions. You might choose to present on how to build a strong group with a particular theory, method or innovation. You may want to submit on leadership development or how to maintain oneself as an effective leader for our new self-care tract. How do we deal with difficult members in our groups? Do you have some research that you would like to present on the process or effectiveness of therapeutic groups? 

As Co-Chairs of the Annual Meeting we invite you to submit proposals that address issues related to our topic. We encourage you to have courage and take risks to submit proposals on topics that are creative, challenging and new for you. Your participation and the Annual Meeting itself will be richer for it.

Submissions are due by April 1, 2008. We encourage you to use the online submission form.
Go to: http://www.agpa.org/mtgs/onlineproposals/index.asp 
We look forward to receiving your proposals and to an exciting meeting in 2009.

Sincerely,
Mary Dluhy, M.S.W., CGP, FAGPA
Barry Helfmann, Psy.D., CGP, FAGPA
Co-Chairs, Annual Meeting Committee 
Adam Blatner, M.D.
   website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20080315/9874bc87/attachment.html