VANCOUVER YOUTH TO CREATE "1,000 DAYS" PROJECT If you were to walk into the Vancouver Public Library this Saturday, you would likely witness some 150 Canadian school kids and sponsors sitting in teams of 10, charged with designing a creative community project that could be carried out over the next 1,000 days to 2000.

Before and after this youth workshop, the Vancouver based International Foundation of Learning will host two evenings of celebration, April 4th and 5th, which will celebrate the 1,000 Day milestone. Friday evening greetings from the Mayor of Vancouver will be followed by local High School Choirs. A Saturday evening program will kick off with a "Festival of Lights" procession, complete with hand-held flashlights. After all the ethnic dancing and theatrics, the "Global Citizenship 2000" Youth Congress will celebrate midnight, April 6th, with a rousing first time ever sung chorus of "This world is your world," an adaptation of "This Land is Your Land."

The conductor of this "1,000 Days till 2000" youth spectacular is Dr. Desmond Berghofer, a 58-year old "visioneer" and futurist. Up until 1988, Berghofer served in the Alberta Department of Advanced Education. Reflecting on two decades of service, Berghofer said, "We were good at creating knowledge and teaching it, but those lessons kept piling up, with no sense of what it was all adding up to." In 1988, Berghofer, pulled out of this track, and teamed up in Vancouver with Dr. Geraldine Schwartz, clinical psychologist. Together they launched Creative Learning Int'l, which specializes in leadership and the creative management of change.

By the early '90s, Berghofer and Schwartz unveiled their "Countdown 2000" program, in anticipation of the July 1994, "2,000 Day till 2,000" milestone. Reflecting on the milestone they serve, Berghofer said, "We've already been at this for 2,000 days, and it has been lonely for the last 1,990 days!"

Lonely is the latest thing which the Creative Learning Int'l web site will probably be this Saturday morning when they plan to broadcast live a Congress address using CUSeeMe Broadcast. Check out http://griffin.multimedia.edu/~gc2000/ before Saturday for how you can view this plenary, as CUSeeMe software must be downloaded beforehand.

Berghofer set forth his "strategic visioning" concept in his 1992 "Celestine Prophecy" type novel entitled, "The Visioneers." As he tells it, "the story is about a group of ordinary people who changed the world." It is set in Israel. The lead characters are peacemakers, and the New Jerusalem becomes a metaphor for the human future. http://www.waking.com/titles_v/visioneers.html

Since the futures movement came on the scene in 1967, Berghofer, who based his doctorate dissertation on trend analysis, has shifted his focus from forecasting the future to helping people enter into "the creative aspects of the future." Because, as he puts it, the "future we get is an outgrow of the values we hold and the action we take."

Berghofer hopes his "Global Citizenship 2000" congress for youth will produce a vision of "what we wish to create in the future, and steps needed to do it, personal and collective." And in 2000, Berghofer claims Vancouver youth will "assemble again at the birth of the new millennium to celebrate the fruit of the efforts begun 1,000 days earlier." Source: talk2000@rmii.com

By October, Silverstein had erected a well-linked web site on the concept, which today features over 30 events and organizations hosting 1,000 Day events www.worldpeace2000.com. They range from "World Action Millennium 2000" Barcelona Congress this weekend, http://www.wam2000.org/guest/comeng.html to Greenwich's auction of each of the next 1,000 days to worthy causes wishing to toot their own horn. Think of it as a kind of "Queen for a day" campaign, this time for British charities.

Hey, "1,000 Points of Light," shine a little brighter. How about it "Random Acts of Kindness?" Get with the millennial calendar!

New Millennial Sites:
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"Here are new sites in cyberspace"

THE HOLY SEE: "The Official Vatican Site for Jubilee 2000" It was 18-months in the making, and as of Easter Sunday it came out of the tomb, so to speak. Not only does the Vatican now have its own domain, www.vatican.va, but it has its own "Jubilee 2000" section. This artful site features church documents, excerpts from its "Tertium Millennium" magazine and the pope's influential "Tertio Millennio Adveniente." Unfortunately, it is "picture" poor, and has no links yet to the numerous online national Holy Year efforts launched by Catholic bishops around the world. http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/ju_en.htm

THE BILLENNIUM(tm): "The Official Celebration of the Year 2000(tm)" Tune your browsers on Sunday, April 6th to the Billennium(tm) band-width, as the Mitten Group is relaunching their high graphic web site. Billed in advance to the media as "the definitive on-line destination for celebrating the Year 2000" this new-born site allows a global audience to cast their vote in the Billennium Hall of Fame, discover how we celebrated the last millennium and learn about ways schools and communities can become involved in The Billennium(tm). There's even the opportunity to register your ultimate New Year's Resolution, which will be downloaded onto an optical disk and launched onboard a satellite to become an orbiting Billennium Time Capsule! All this on April 6th, and more. http://www.billennium.com

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Publication keywords: media, events, millennium, society, future This issue of "Let's Talk 2000" is copyright 1997 by Bimillennial Press, Inc. All rights reserved. LET'S TALK 2000(tm) is a trademark of the Magi Group.