“Families Surviving Loss” to be addressed at conference held at Messiah College

GRANTHAM, Pa. (Spet. 28, 2006) — Messiah College will host the 16th Annual Building Strong Families Conference, sponsored by The Mid-Atlantic Council on Family Relations. With the theme “Families Surviving Loss,” the conference will be held Oct. 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Boyer Hall, located on the college’s Grantham campus. The conference is open to the public and professional credits are available. On-site registration is $55. For more information, visit www.messiah.edu/bsf or call (717) 766-2511, extension 7050.

Kandy Ferree, president and CEO of the National AIDS Fund in Washington D.C., will give the conference’s keynote address on “Denial, Loss and Resilience: The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Individuals, Families, Communities and Nations” at 9:15 a.m. Ferree has extensive experience in designing, implementing and evaluating HIV/AIDS prevention and care services, community capacity building, group facilitation and corporate training, as well as philanthropy and grantmaking at the community and national levels. Ferree’s vision is to create innovative, public-private partnerships that empower community-level decision-making and build community capacity.

Multiple workshops and sessions will be held throughout the day on various issues including “A Peaceful Village: An Intervention to Help Families Cope with Violence in their Communities,” “Teens and Grief,” “We Used to Share a Room…An In-Depth Study of Sibling Loss” and “Transitioning into Adulthood.” Professors from Messiah College, Shippensburg University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke and Penn State University, among others, will present their ideas during the multiple concurrent sessions.

Messiah College, a private Christian college of the liberal and applied arts and sciences, enrolls more than 2,800 undergraduate students in 60 majors. Established in 1909, the primary campus is located in Grantham, Pa., near the state capital of Harrisburg. A satellite campus affiliated with Temple University is located in Philadelphia.