Friday, February 17, 2012

Speaker Highlights

Ecumenical Advocacy Days March 23-26!
Compassion, Peace, and Justice Training Day March 23!

 Ecumenical Advocacy Days
Crystal City Double Tree Hotel
"Is This the Fast I Seek?"
March 23rd – March 26th 2012
For more information and to register go to
www.advocacydays.org

Presbyterian Leadership at Ecumenical Advocacy Days:

Friday Evening Opening Celebration
Dr. Margaret Aymer 
Associate Professor of New Testament, Interdenominational Theological Center

Dr. Margaret Aymer teaches courses on the New Testament and has a special interest in biblical hermeneutics, particularly how African diasporic communities signify the Bible as "scripture." Some of her most significant publications are "Teaching Christians to 'Read': Theological Education and the Church"; "Empire, Alter-empire and the Twenty-first Century"; "What Do the Gospels Say about Sex and the Church?" in Frequently Asked Questions about Sexuality, the Bible, and the Church; First Pure, Then Peaceable: Frederick Douglass Reads James and a forthcoming book, African American Biblical Interpretation: An Introduction with co-author, Randall C. Bailey.


Conference Music Minister
Dr. Patrick Evans
Associate Professor of Sacred Music, Yale Divinity School and Institue of Sacred Music
Artist in Residence Broadway Presbyterian Church, New York, NY



Patrick is committed to the reclaiming and renewal of congregational song. As Director of Music for the daily ecumenical worship in Marquand Chapel at Yale University, he works with the Dean of Chapel, student chapel ministers and musicians, and a wide range of students, faculty, and guests from varied denominational backgrounds and musical traditions. He recently joined a team of church musician/teachers convened by the United Methodist Church General Board of Global Missions, spending two weeks in Uganda, teaching and learning from church musicians and pastors from that country, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Sudan. He has also been on the faculties of the Montreat and Westminster Conferences on Music and Worship, and was Director of Music for Seattle University 2007 Summer Institute for Liturgy and Worship.

As a singer, he has been a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Cleveland Art Song Festival, and the Pacific Music Festival, Sapporo, Japan. He has appeared regularly in opera, oratorio, and recital performances, and has sung All the Way through Evening: Songs from the AIDS Quilt Songbook throughout the United States. During a recent sabbatical year, he served as artist-in-residence at Union Theological Seminary, and he currently serves in the same capacity at Broadway Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. Minister of music for ten years at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, Mr. Evans was previously associate professor of music at the University of Delaware, where he chaired the voice faculty and directed the opera program.


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Compassion, Peace, and Justice Training Day
New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
“Presbyterians and Economic Justice”
8:30 – 5:00 March 23rd, 2012

For more information and to register go to
http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/washington/compassion-peace-and-justice-training-day/
We are offering a discounted ticket for those attending Ecumenical Advocacy Days!
Featured Panelists:

Rev. Shannan Vance-Ocampo
Pastor, Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church
Director of Colombia Programs, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship


Shannan Vance-Ocampo serves as Pastor at the Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth Presbytery (NJ).  She is also the Director of Colombia Programs for the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship which is a volunteer position helping manage and oversee the Colombia Accompaniment Program and faith-based advocacy related to Colombia.    Her husband Juan Gabriel Ocampo Valle is a native of Bogotá, Colombia and was educated at the Colegio Americano in Bogotá, which is part of the network of Presbyterian private education in Colombia.   This winter she co-led a PPF delegation to visit the Iglesia Presbiteriana de Colombia (IPC) and two of their Presbyteries (Urubá and Bogotá).  In 2010 she was a participant in the joint IPC/PC(U.S.A.) delegation to evaluate the Accompaniment Program and also in a Witness for Peace/Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation to visit the sites of proposed US military bases in Colombia.  She has been travelling to Colombia since 1999 and is a member of the PC(U.S.A.) Colombia Mission Network.    She was ordained to ministry in 2001.  

Valery Nodem
Associate for International Hunger
PCUSA Hunger Program


Valéry Nodem is the Associate for International Hunger at the Presbyterian Hunger Program. Previously Nodem served as coordinator of the Joining Hands network, RELUFA, a network of church, ecumenical and non-profit organizations that focus on common strategies to address hunger, poverty and socio-economic and environmental injustice in Cameroon.  Under his leadership, RELUFA was successful in working towards the food sovereignty and self-development of impoverished Cameroonians by implementing community owned and managed grain banks in drought prone areas of northern Cameroon as well as providing those populations with micro-finance opportunities through the Credit Against Poverty (CAP) initiative.

RELUFA has also worked for equity and transparency in the extractive industries. Nodem was instrumental in RELUFA’s participation in the Publish What You Pay Coalition (PWYP) to promote transparency in the extractive industries to ensure that oil, gas and mineral wealth contributes to development and poverty alleviation.  In July 2010, Congress passed the U.S. Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which requires all U.S. and foreign companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to publicly report how much they pay governments for access to their oil, gas and minerals.
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