Calvin Students To Attend UN Summit
A group of Calvin College students will travel to New York next week to attend three days of prayer and fasting surrounding the 2005 United Nations World Summit, described as the "largest gathering of world leaders in history."
The students, who likely will number a dozen or more, will join students from North Park Seminary in Illinois for the September 14-16 summit.
There they will provide logistical support for "An Interfaith Vigil to Overcome Global Poverty," hosted at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza by the Micah Challenge, Sojourners and Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation.
The vigil is being organized in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), agreed to and signed by all UN member nations in 2002. A particular focus for the three organizing groups is the goal to eradicate world hunger and poverty.
Jeff Bouman, the director of Calvin’s Service-Learning Center, will accompany the students on the trip and says it should be an eye-opening experience ("My guess," he says, "is we’re going to see protesters from all over the political spectrum"), but also, he hopes, a mind and heart-changing event.
"It (the trip) introduces them to the notion that problems are complex and multifaceted," he says. "Our students will be in a position to evaluate and analyze their own perspectives. They will see things they can’t see here (at Calvin)."
They will also learn, he says, that catastrophe exists within a global context.
"Katrina has put an interesting frame around this," he says. "As urgent as that event is, and it is urgent, I for one don’t want students to feel like this is the only urgency in the world."
Jason Fileta, a 2005 Calvin alum and field organizer for the Micah Challenge who is coordinating the Calvin-North Park effort, agrees.
"The Millennium Development Goals," he says, "are not a new agenda but have already been agreed to, and this meeting is the best opportunity to remind world leaders of their privilege to end poverty. It's essential for small Christian communities like Calvin to be involved because it connects them to the broader world community in a way that utilizes their voices and passions to help the poor."
The students, in addition to participating in at least part of the fast, will set up the site at the Plaza, welcome speakers, direct participants to the site, and do publicity throughout the city.
They will also participate in a press conference graced by activists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sojourners founder Jim Wallis and David Beckman president of Bread for the World says Fileta, who works for the CRC's Office of Social Justice and Hunger.
"They will be presenting at the press conference," says Fileta. "I'm going to ask them to talk about their faith and how it relates to the Millennium Development Goals and why these students sacrificed a few days of class and piled in a van to drive to New York City."
Calvin students who aren't making the New York trip will be given the opportunity to pray, fast and write letters to political leaders as part of the 30,000 Campaign, a Sojourners effort that recognizes the 30,000 children who die each day worldwide from poverty-related causes
