First Annual Twain Masonic Awareness Award Program Links Participating Freemasonry Lodges with the Masonic Information Center

Freemasonry Initiates Program to Recognize Outstanding Performance of Lodges whose Grand Lodge is a Member of the Conference of Grand Masters in North America

Silver Spring, MD (PRWEB) June 29, 2006 –- The Masonic Information Center (MIC), the information bureau of the Masonic Service Association of North America (MSANA), announced that participants in the Twain Award for Masonic Awareness program will communicate through new MIC-managed, Web-based tools. “By initiating the Twain Award, we are taking the next step to put Freemasonry back into a prominent place within the social context of our communities,” says Richard E. Fletcher, Executive Secretary of MSANA, “and to accomplish that, lodges need to communicate about each others’ successes using the resources of MIC and the Internet.”

Networking Lodges to MSANA/MIC Resources
Masonic lodges whose Grand Lodge is a member of the Conference of Grand Masters in North America and that registered as a participant in the Twain Award program will benefit from a support network, including a dedicated Website, listserv, blog, and teamboard.

According to Fletcher, the Twain Award also encourages Freemasons to communicate the facts of Masonry past and present rather than the fiction that current media promotes. “Dan Brown’s books may generate interest in the fiction of Freemasonry,” says MIC steering committee member Jim Tresner, Ph.D., “but MIC asks lodges to promote the factual heritage of the fraternity of Freemasons reported in MIC’s recent publication “It’s About Time!” available for download at MSANA’s homepage.

Honoring Lodge-Based Innovation, Communication, Energy
The Award borrows Masonic brother Mark Twain’s identity as a lively, innovative communicator who consistently challenged his audiences to think and act responsibly, to ask questions, and to seek enlightenment. In 1910, Twain referred to Freemasonry as "the grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive," says editor of the Scottish Rite’s Northern Light magazine Richard H. Curtis. The Twain Award honors merit based upon each lodge’s report of Masonic Awareness accomplishments within the lodge and throughout the community that are completed between December 1, 2005 and November 30, 2006.

Find more information about the Twain Award at http://www.msana.com/twainaward. The Masonic Service Association of North America (MSANA) was formed in 1919 to provide accurate and factual information to its member Grand Lodges.

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