Contact:

Aaron Myers
National Director Designate
Global Family Program
Amyers@gfday.org
239-784-2319

December 30, 2008

Despite Cancer, Global Family Day Co-founder Fights for
Presidential Support of International Day of Peace

(WASHINGTON) When doctors told author and former television head-writer Linda Grover she only had a 20 percent chance of survival, instead of slowing down, the cofounder of Global Family Day, went into high gear. For the past 10 years, Grover has worked tirelessly to bring Global Family Day to the world and she wasn’t about to let cancer get in her way.

“If anything, I’m more determined than ever to let the world know about Global Family Day and its potential as a tool for peace,” Grover said. “This year may be my last chance to see a dream of my children and my life’s work come to fruition. I’m not about to give up now.”

Grover said that one of her main goals this year is to see President Bush publicly reaffirm his commitment to Global Family Day by signing a D.C. School Children’s Building Blocks for Peace and Sharing.

“For the past eight years, we have asked the president to follow the desires of Congress and show his support for this international holiday celebrating peace, sharing and the joining together as a global family,” Grover said. “This is incomprehensible.”

As Global Family Day co-founders, Grover and Congressman John Conyers, Jr. first brought the holiday to life on Jan 1, 2000. Celebrated on January 1 of each year, Global Family Day is recognized as an international day of peace and sharing by people of all races, religions and cultures. The holiday was first adopted as a holiday by the United States Congress in 2000. It was adopted by the United Nations as an international day of peace in 2001. Global Family Day grew out of an initiative sponsored by the late Senator Paul Wellstone (MN).

Grover, who is one of nine participants in a national case study by USC which combines-chemo therapy with periods of fasting, has managed to continue her efforts despite the combined effects of both four-day periods without eating and the depilating effects of chemo.

Aaron Myers, National Director Designate for the Global Family Program and former Obama Field Organizer in southwest Florida, added, “Linda is absolutely amazing. At times she is physically exhausted yet there she is, working the phones, emailing ambassadors, whatever it takes. Global Family Day has been her life’s work. Now she is truly giving her life to see this holiday take hold.”

For the 2009 celebration, Grover is bringing together a growing group of international ambassadors and leaders to reaffirm their dedication to the values of Global Family Day by signing one of more than 150 Global Building Blocks for Peace and Sharing have been created for all the worlds’ heads of state, created by D.C. school children.

“Fighting cancer is kids stuff when compared to fighting for world peace,” Grover concluded.

Brief Biography of Linda Grover:

• Completed High School at 15

• Worked as legislative aid to Congressman Sam Yorty at age 20

• Served as clerk of House of Indian Affairs Subcommittee, one of the youngest individuals to hold the position

• Married Broadway and television actor Stanley Grover

• Served on the National Committee for an Effective Congress

• Caseworker for the International Rescue Committee resettling the refugee families of Hungarian freedom fighters

• Author of the House Keepers, the story of the grassroots campaign to save a New York apartment building, which was serialized in the New York Post and later purchased as a sitcom by CBS.

• Performed in commercials including a long running “Kick the Habit” anti smoking campaign

• Scriptwriter for The Edge of Night and Guiding Light.

• Coauthored New York Times best seller (#4) Looking Terrific with Emily Cho in 1977.

• Served as head writer for both Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital

• Grover’s children all worked as child actors staring in both movies and television. All went on to successful show business careers in soap operas, films and prize-winning commercials.

Since 1999, Grover has committed her life to the full-time job of creating and promoting Global Family Day as a tool for worldwide peace.

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The Global Family Program is the organizational branch of Global Family Day. Global Family Day which is celebrated each year on January 1, is a day designated by both the United States Congress and the United Nations as a day of peace and sharing for all faiths, cultures, races, nationalities and economic classes. The Global Family Program works to bring all peoples of the world together as members of the global family to celebrate Global Family Day by committing to 48 hours of sharing and restraint from violence on January 1 each year. For more information about Global Family Day contact Aaron Myers, National Director Designate, Global Family Program at 239-784-2319.

The blocks contain a number of items to help encourage heads of state to pledge to support Global Family Day and spread the word about this peace-seeking holiday, designed to bring the world’s people together in this time of trouble, including:

Children’s Letter to Heads of State
How to Celebrate Global Family Day
Sample Statements of Support for Global Family Day
U.S. Resolution 317
U.S. Resolution 582
UN Resolution 56:2
UN Resolution 54:29

Global Family Day, co-founded by Congressman John Conyers, Jr.and Linda Grover, was first adopted as a global day of peace and sharing by the United States Congress in 2000. It was adopted as an international holiday by the United Nations in 2001 and the United States Congress reaffirmed its commitment to Global Family Day in 2006. Celebrated on January 1 each year, the holiday is designated as a time to bring together the “global family” in an international day of peace and sharing.

For more information about Global Family Day or to schedule an interview, please contact:

Aaron Myers
National Director Designate
Global Family Day
Amyers@gfday.org
239-784-2319

Contact:

Aaron Myers
National Director Designate
Global Family Program
Amyers@gfday.org
239-784-2319

December 22, 2008

Ambassadors Call for World Wide Observance of Global Family Day

(WASHINGTON) A collation of international ambassadors lead by H.E. Latchezar Petkov, Bulgarian ambassador to the United States, is working to recognize Global Family Day by calling for a world-wide day of unity on Jan. 1. The collation of ambassadors is asking that for the 48 hours of Jan. 1, all people refrain from violence and participate in a day of family and sharing.

“We’re excited to see Global Family Day being used as a tool for peace,” stated Linda Grover, cofounder of Global Family Day. “By working together on a global scale to significantly reduce violence for 48 hours work together as a global family, we are placing the building blocks needed to broker peace on a much larger scale.”

World leaders representing the countries of the collation will be signing “Global Family Day Building Blocks of Peace and Sharing” which were created by Washington D.C. school children as a symbolic representation of their support of Global Family Day and its use as a tool for peace.

Along with Bosnia, the Russian Federation, Czech Republic, Afghanistan, and Syrian Arab Republic are among of a few of the growing collation.

Global Family Day was first adopted as a global day of peace and sharing by the United States Congress in 2000. It was adopted as an international holiday by the United Nations in 2001 and the United States Congress reaffirmed its commitment to Global Family Day in 2006. Celebrated on Jan 1 each year, the holiday is designated as a time to bring together the “global family” in an international day of peace and sharing.

“As a global community we have very few shared traditions,” Grover said, “As a result, we lack a shared experience which is so vital when it comes to resolving international conflicts. Global Family Day gives us an opportunity to build a new, internationally shared tradition for the 21^st century. By building shared traditions and experience, we are opening the lines of communication and building a foundation of international collaboration which will be vital as we face the challenges of the 21^st century.”

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The Global Family Program is the organizational branch of Global Family Day. Global Family Day which is celebrated each year on January 1, is a day designated by both the United States Congress and the United Nations as a day of peace and sharing for all faiths, cultures, races, nationalities and economic classes. The Global Family Program works to bring all peoples of the world together as members of the global family to celebrate Global Family Day by committing to 48 hours of sharing and restraint from violence. For more information about Global Family Day contact Aaron Myers, National Director Designate, Global Family Program at 239-784-2319.

CELEBRATING GLOBAL FAMILY DAY

Commemorating the successful
“One Day in Peace January 1, 2000”
(UN Res.54/29)

To Prepare for a Worldwide Day of Reconciliation on January 1 each year:

• EASE HUNGER OF OTHERS Participants will first do all they can to see that fellow global family members have food for the new year - because, as a child recently pointed out, “Nobody can celebrate if they don’t have anything to eat.”

• LEARN TOGETHER Schools will be furnished with lesson plans for September on the importance of holidays in our lives, October, on the logic of nonviolence, November, on the senselessness of hunger and December on the joy to be had in celebrating life on earth as one global family.

• REACH OUT Families, faith groups and organizations will be asked to reach across cultural barriers and develop new ideas and new efforts at cooperation and understanding.

On January 1, Global Family Day, people of all nations will be invited to:

• SHARE Exchange a greeting, a gift of food (or a recipe) with someone in another part of the world. (This will provide economic stimulus as well as increased good will.) First Families of all nations can lead in this effort.

• GATHER Sit down to local meals (in homes, houses of worship and community centers) that will be symbolically linked as part of a single world-wide gathering of the global family to remember the past, enjoy the present (if possible) and resolve for a better future.

• GIVE Match the monetary value of their Global Family Day meal with a specially-dedicated gift to the needy at home or abroad

• PROMISE Write personal pledges for the future to loved ones or to the global family at large and exchange small ‘connecting stones’ from their own homeland that will link us to the Earth and to one another. Pledge to renew your promises on the first day of every month.

• COLLABORATE Collectively review our achievements of the past year and plan goals to be achieved by the global family as a whole in the year to come.

• CELEBRATE Join in special cultural activities: art, music, dance, indigenous children’s drumming for peace, pyrotechnic displays with a theme of peace and sharing on New Years Eve and appropriate ceremonies during January 1^st sporting events.

You and your family have a hard job.  You are in charge of many many people.  You try to make them safe and keep them from hurting each other, make sure they have food and medicine and that the children go to school.

We thought it might be an easier job to do if everybody in the world really, really knew that we are one family, all of us, and that we should take care of each other.

That is why children have started Global Family Day.  To help everybody remember, for 48 hours every year (while it is January 1 anywhere), that it feels good to get together and give thanks for life.  And maybe have a meal together.

There are so many things to be scared about right now; but if we take care and don’t fight we will be all right.

The Children’s Steering Committee, GLOBAL FAMILY

PS: If you want, you can keep the block we made for you or sign it and send it back so we can show it at a museum or something.

Contact:

Aaron Myers
National Director Designate
Global Family Program
Amyers@gfday.org
239-784-2319

December 22, 2008

World Awaits President Bush’s Recognition of Global Family Day

(WASHINGTON) The organizing body behind Global Family Day announced today that they are awaiting a response from the Bush administration to their request to join China and other nations in publicly reaffirming their support of Global Family Day on January 1.

According to Aaron Myers, National Director Designate, Global Family Program, “Global Family day 2009 is especially important as Jan 1, is also, coincidentally, the 30th anniversary of restored relations between the United States and China.”

“School children of D.C. are asking more than 150 world leaders to publically endorse Global Family Day and its message of worldwide peace and sharing by signing one of the children’s ‘Building Blocks for Peace and Sharing’ Myers said. “The Chinese Embassy has expressed their desire to participate and told us that if President Bush will sign one of the blocks, President Hu Jintao will as well.

Myers added that a coalition of ambassadors lead by Latchezar Petkov, Bulgarian ambassador to the United States, are lending their support by delivering the Building Blocks to their respective world leaders.
Linda Grover, cofounder of Global Family day (with Congressman John Conyers Jr.) added, “We are hoping that President and Mrs. Bush will come forward and reaffirm their support of this holiday. For the past seven years, we have repeatedly asked the President to acknowledge Paul Wellstone’s S. Con. Res. 138, 2000 and further House and Senate Resolutions (Conyers, Reid/Inouye) adopted in 2006. The White House has written (Dec. that they are considering a public signing, but at this point, we are still waiting.”

Global Family Day Background

In 2000, Congress adopted Paul Wellstone’s resolution establishing January 1 as a day of peace and sharing to eventually be celebrated by the whole world. Planned White House Rose Garden ceremonies were put off when the 2000 election results were delayed. On January 4, 2001, President Clinton instead received founders Linda Grover, Congressman John Conyers and several children in a private meeting in the Oval Office, where he praised the program, which had been championed by hundreds of DC schoolchildren lobbying the Congress.

In 2001, public announcements for a holiday that would help unite the world were planned by the Bush White House, (by Congressional legislative liaison office, former GM executive Bob Marsh) but cancelled after 9/11, because, says co-founder Grover, “He explained that we were bombing Afghanistan at the time and it wouldn’t look right to be pursuing a peace initiative.” Bush however did send a letter stating his support at about the same time the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution urging that the world recognize the day annually. (UNGA56/2)

By 2006 the president had not yet acknowledged S.Con. Res. 138 and also U.N. Resolution 56/2. At that time, the US House of Representatives unanimously urged in HCON 317, “That the President invite former Presidents of the United States, Nobel laureates, and other notables, including American business, labor, faith, and civic leaders, to join the President in promoting appropriate activities for Americans and in extending appropriate greetings from the families of America to families in the rest of the world.” The Senate also adopted a similar resolution. But nothing happened.

This year, with mounting economic and other crises, DC schoolchildren and ambassadors have decided to take things into their own hands. “We’ve never needed Global Family Day more than right now,” said Myers, former Obama Field Organizer, now directing the Global Family Program.

Sir Nigel Sheinwald, British Ambassador to the United States commented that Global Family Day is, “A unique initiative and one I am proud to support”

In June of 2008, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Zhou Wenzhong announced China’s support for Global Family Day. “In this regard, we stand ready to work closely with you and all peace-loving peoples.”

Bulgarian Ambassador Latchezar Petkov this week begins an effort to enlist as many ambassadors as possible in the Global Family Day awareness campaign.

Meanwhile, DC public school students are preparing to deliver individualized “Building Blocks for Peace and Sharing” to every DC ambassador for transmittal to their heads of state. “Our goal,” said Ebony Payne, a senior at The School Without Walls, who has been working for several months on the project, is to make at least one billion people aware of Global Family Day between now and January 1.”

Myers added, “We are still experiencing a little shock and awe that we might actually pull this one off. It’s all up to President Bush – or President Elect Obama, if he will sign a block.”

“Even while we are at war, we still want peace,” Grover concluded.

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The Global Family Program is the organizational branch of Global Family Day. Global Family Day which is celebrated each year on January 1, is a day designated by both the United States Congress and the United Nations as a day of peace and sharing for all faiths, cultures, races, nationalities and economic classes. The Global Family Program works to bring all peoples of the world together as members of the global family to celebrate Global Family Day by committing to 48 hours of sharing and restraint from violence. For more information about Global Family Day contact Aaron Myers, National Director Designate, Global Family Program at 239-784-2319.