Sharon Tennison - Center for Citizen Initiatives

Mikhail Gorbachev appreciated the effects of Sharon Tennison's efforts in the USSR.  She met with Vladimir Putin before he rose to power, and the establishment in Russia made allowance for anonymous meetings when the organization brought Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the country.   Leaders in both The US and Russia recognize the need for efforts to defeat alcoholism and addictions.  AA just celebrated the twenty year anniversary in Russia.

Sharon Tennison, the President of the Center for Citizen Initatives, spoke to the Carrollton Kiwanis Club on Friday , February 8.    The Center for Citizen Initiatives was the brainchild of Tennison, who in the 1980's dreamed that the efforts of ordinary citizens in both Russia and the US could slow the threat of mutual nuclear distruction.  She discovered the similiarity that ordinary people in both continents disapprove of many of the dangerous actions of respective governments.   The Center for Citizen Initiatives has worked diligently to bring ordinary citizens of both continents together.  www.csisf.org

Sharon Tennison has detailed her three decades of progress in a book :  The Power of Impossible Ideas: Ordinary Citizens' Extraordinary Efforts to Avert International Crises.

Don Chapman, a member of the Kiwanis Club of Newnan,  brought Tennison to Carrollton.  Don was head of a Navy Reserve Unit when he met Tennison and heard of CCI.     After serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot with 199 combat missions,  and after retiring from a career flying for Delta Airlines,  Chapman, philanthropist and educator, now serves on the board of CCI .