Date: October 19th 2008

Please consider setting up Circle of Friends for Musical Missions of Peace in your community.

The next meeting of the Boulder Circle of Friends of Musical Missions will be Monday, Oct. 20, 7:30 at Zia's, 6481 N. 63rd St. (One mile N of 63rd and Diagonal Highway) Come help us advance our strategy for supporting the growth of Iraqi Arab music schools in the Iraqi refugee camps!!

Iraqi music schools have now been set up by Musical Missions of Peace in the largest Iraqi refugee populations of both Syria and Jordan so that Iraqi refugee children can carry forward these ancient cultural gifts. We want to shower these refugee camps with Arabic music schools. The second part of the new project is the Musical Ambassador program. This will involve training people to travel and melt borders with music, modeling Cameron and Kristina's work (see www.musicalmissions.com)

ALSO, Cameron and Kristina will perform this Sunday for the Abrahamic Initiative group, at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, Oct 19th, 2008, 4:00 - 5:30 pm, 1350 Washington St, Denver, CO Cameron and Kristina and other musician friends, Arabic Music and Islamic Cultural Contributions toward Peace What is a Circle of Friends for Musical Missions? A people-to-people program to support the work of Musical Missions which tells Iraqi people that there are Americans who care about who they are. We Americans can now support Iraqi Culture through these Circles which have a flexible structure that allows each individual to plug-in according to their own interests, skills and talents. A Circle can be a church congregation, a peace organization that takes on some project to support MM, a group of friends, or a couple or individual that chooses a specific task to help the cause. The Boulder Circle will meet once a month, with sub-groups working on their various projects, and reporting back to coordinate at the monthly meeting. Read on to see some of the pathways of support that have developed so far.

How to plug-in and contribute support?

Now that the Circle of Friends for Musical Missions has birthed itself in Boulder, we are reaching out to other communities and organizations to form their own Circle of Friends for MM. You can help with this! Do you know of an individual, a group or a congregation that would love a way to reach out to Iraqi refugee people in this way? If so, please forward this. We will support them with strategies to form their Circle of Friends. For example, Cook Rogers is going to contact Tara High School of Performing Arts to see if they would like to weave this project into their program.

Contact musicians to donate a percentage of sales to MMof P. If you know of musicians that you think are good prospects for this, please send their contact info and any success you have had with introducing this idea. So far, we have got the attention of Michael Franti on this, and we'll keep you posted. For example, Strider Benston once dazzled Michael Franti with his poetry and received a big hug from him--now we have two threads into Mr. Franti, after Kirk Drogsvold planted the seed after Michael's latest Boulder concert. Who do you know?

Video on Ambassadorship/Music School Project : there is a team working on putting together a 3 min promo video focused on the new Ambassadorship/Music School Project TV: We'd like to get the project on local TV, Free Speech TV and Link TV. Anyone have the links to these producers?

Local Brewer's Ball benefit for Musical Missions. Are you interested in being part of a team that puts on an local fun event? The concept: get a local homebrewer's association to donate their brew for a beer-tasting/ dance with C & K & friends providing the music, with proceeds going to the Ambassadorship/Music School Project. This is an idea a friend of mine in Aspen has executed for the last 3 years with good results. It could be a lot of fun, too. We are working with the concept of "personal outsourcing" to help us network with the numerous church and peace organizations that Cam and Kristina presented their "Singing in Baghdad" show to. We will invite them to form their own Circle of Friends and help support them to do so.

Your great ideas can be added to the Circle of Friends for Musical Missions strategy. Please give a call, or bring them to the next meeting.

The best is yet to come!
Peace, Zia Parker
Musical Missions of Peace, Board
www.musicalmissions.com
303-530-1415

Zia Parker <ziaparker@yahoo.com>