From the Board of Directors

Your Board of Directors has been working behind the scenes to help ACISTE through its own spiritually transformative experience (STE), and it is re-emerging with new vigor. Until now, ACISTE was largely run by its founding visionary, Yolaine Stout, until her efforts were interrupted by a family member’s illness. Because of this you may have seen that our website was not updated and some contacts went unanswered, while the forum remained active. Yolaine continues to serve as our Executive Director and to offer guiding wisdom. But she has recently asked members of the Board to take everyday tasks off her plate. That transition is well underway, so the running of ACISTE is transitioning to its broader community. As ACISTE emerges from its STE we will see a butterfly spreading its wings to host a larger group of experiencers with a growing offering of virtual and local resources.

Our current priorities are:

• Support for experiencers
• Updating ACISTE’s online presence
• Recruiting volunteers
• Planning the 2015 Annual Conference
• Providing news updates
• Responding to general inquiries

Support for experiencers

ACISTE offers support to experiencers through the experiencer forums, where activity has been ongoing and through local support and discussion groups – visit the forums here.
Individual support is also available through our network of:

• certified clinicians,
• spiritual directors,
• life coaches (a life coach directory will soon be provided), and
• via email and phone contact via our Contact link at the top of this page.

ACISTE Certification
Certification training will continue. We are re-visioning how that training can be delivered through study materials and online instruction. And we plan to offer certification training to leaders of peer support groups in the near future. Please let us know of any changes or additions to the support and discussion groups or certificant listings by contacting drgaryse@gmail.com.

We are catching up with general email and phone inquiries and ask anyone seeking support to contact your local ACISTE certificant via their listed information in the Support directory above.

Updating ACISTE’s online presence.

Many of today’s communications occur online via social networking portals and the “new old media” of email and websites. There is a vast constituency of STE experiencers who have not yet found us. Our first step is to update and revise the ACISTE website. That is the portal for accessing ACISTE’s resources. Finding us will be much easier if we are also searchable through social networking media and formatted for mobile devices. The expertise of board members is just about sufficient to update the website in its current form. Its underlying software would benefit by being ported to a more current and popular software platform, like WordPress. We seek volunteers for that effort and the implementation of social networking sites.

Recruiting volunteers.

The members of the Board are all volunteers. We are doing all we can but need your help. We are seeking volunteers to help with bookkeeping and to respond to general email and phone inquiries. Volunteers may email mariegracebrook00@gmail.com.

2015 Annual ACISTE Conference.

We are in the initial phase of planning a virtual conference in November or December of 2015. We envision a virtual conference attended by participants across the globe. Fees and costs will be greatly reduced without the need to travel, stay in a hotel or gather in physical facilities. We expect the conference to combine recorded expert interviews and presentations and possibly live, simulcast events. Some of the certificant training may also be included. We are also considering planning an in-person retreat to follow that event.

News updates

We plan to resume more regular news and updates, now that more of us can edit the website. The latest news will be linked to the website’s home page, but it will no longer dominate that page. It will direct people to the ACISTE community resources, in general. As you can see we need more technical expertise to work that out.

General inquiries

Media contacts and other general inquiries are being handled through the Contact link at the top of this page.
Contact Listings will be made more prominent.

Donations are welcome through the payment button on the upper right.