TD 2010
Development Focus
Millenial Goal Guideline Categories
TD Conference 2010
SAVE THE DATE!
Transformational Development Conference
Navigating Gridlock and Chaos
Featuring His Excellency, Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda
June 17 - 19, 2010 at Saint Louis University
Co-sponsored by
Procom Rwanda and Transformational Initiatives
Supporting Partners include
Saint Louis University, Eastern University, and Food for the Hungry
With pre- and post-conference meetings
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We are a community united by God’s call to end physical and spiritual poverty worldwide. We desire to come together to engage in honest conversation that names our common hopes and signals the challenges we face. Without such reflection we drift into a functional idolatry that relies on (and points others to) ourselves, our cultures, our programs, our power, and our resources as the means and ends. There should be a difference that both testifies against injustice, and reveals the glory and goodness of Christ, who is making all things new. We convene to spur each other on to reshape our ways of visioning, living and doing Transformational Development.
IDENTITY
We are a community of diverse voices united by God's call to end physical and spiritual poverty worldwide: field practitioners, scholars from many disciplines, church and community leaders, the next generation, and bridge-builders who stand between different worlds.
VISION
* To name our common hopes, challenges and opportunities
* To further develop a rigorous school of thought and praxis in Transformational Development
* To reshape, realign and reform our ways of Transformational Development
We are a community united by God’s call to end physical and spiritual poverty worldwide. We desire to come together to engage in honest conversation that names our common hopes and signals the challenges we face. Without such reflection we drift into a functional idolatry that relies on (and points others to) ourselves, our cultures, our programs, our power, and our resources as the means and ends. There should be a difference that both testifies against injustice, and reveals the glory and goodness of Christ, who is making all things new. We convene to spur each other on to reshape our ways of visioning, living and doing Transformational Development.
FRAMING THE DISCOURSE
However, we cannot address the complexities of human poverty trapped in the traditional silos that separate the economist and the theologian, the practitioner and the academic, the North and the South, the church and the NGO, the agency and the beneficiary. The intent of the conference is to continue to draw a diversity of voices (including those who have yet to realize how relevant their gifts are) to the conversation and to engage them for change. We encourage representation from relief and development organizations, universities and educational institutions, research bodies, churches and denominations, advocacy and mobilization movements, field programs, the arts and media, and governments. We welcome all who respond to the call.
Those of you who were in attendance last year will remember that inaugural event as an important milestone, the first significant interdisciplinary gathering of Christian academics, practitioners and leaders on Transformational Development in a decade. We engaged in honest dialogue on the challenges and opportunities we face. The exchange provided opportunity to explore new paradigms and pursue substantive change in our practices and postures of development and development education. There was also scope for repentance in areas that, upon reflection, belie a drift into industry conformity rather than transformation in Christ. We were reminded as well of our sins of omission, all that we have still left undone, in our call to sign-post the Kingdom of God. This year we convene again, to spur each other on to reshape our ways of visioning, living and doing Transformational Development. One thing is apparent: this is going to require a much greater degree of community, intentionality, and creativity than ever before.
We are thankful to God for bringing us all together in Spirit-led fellowship. We ask at this year’s conference, that you engage all of your passion and imagination in the shared task of building the Transformational Development community and conference to serve Christ in our walk with the most vulnerable.
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Co-sponsored by Procom Rwanda and Transformational Initiatives
Supporting Partners include Saint Louis University, Eastern University, and Food for the Hungry
With pre- and post-conference meetings
