Calvin College's sixth-annual, student-run Faith and International Development Conference adds a couple of new twists this year. The conference, which runs Thursday through Saturday, February 3-5, is putting an emphasis on students taking action and the event features a plenary speaker who was on the receiving end of development.
Student organizers say that this year's conference, themed - "Turning love into action: Sowing seeds, reaping justice" - is focused on taking students from having a knowledge of development to actually doing something about it.
"[The conference] exposes students to organizations and agencies that they might not be as familiar with, and it exposes students to other like-minded students," said Kay Varela, one of the student organizers.
The conference features five plenary speakers, dozens of breakout sessions and several opportunities for spiritual reflection.
The most intriguing speaker at this year's conference is Michelle Sheba Tolentino, a woman who grew up in the Philippines in an environment of extreme poverty and chaos. At the age of six, she began attending the Compassion-assisted program in the child development center of a local church, the beginning of a journey that would change her life. She now is using her testimony to bring hope to children in poverty around the world.
Other plenary speakers include: Dirk Booy, executive vice president of World Vision; Carlos Hernandez, president of The Association for a More Just Society; Ghenadie Russu, co-founder of Christian Agency for Microenterprise Development and Nicholas Wolterstorff, professor emeritus of philosophical theology at Yale University.
"We really try to emphasize the connection between faith and development, which makes it difficult to choose speakers," said Elisabeth Moos, one of the student organizers of the conference, who came to Calvin because of an interest in the growing field of international development.
The speakers and sessions deal with a range of development issues, including human trafficking, microenterprise, food and water availability, and health issues, to name a few.
The conference, by design, gives hundreds of students from across the country an arena to explore passions and share ideas about international development issues from a Christian perspective.
For more info on the conference, visit http://www.calvin.edu/academic/ids/conference or contact Kay Varela at 616-826-3598.
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Received on Fri Jan 28 11:30:57 2011
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