This second Learning Circle on Poverty focused on Listening to the Poor. Video from the March 8 Roundtable will be available soon.
(Video of the first discussion is at gbgm-umc.org/learningcircles.)

Presenters included:
Diane Dujon, co-editor of For Crying Out Loud: Women's Poverty in the United States. A former welfare recipient, she has been on the front lines of the welfare rights struggle for more than 30 years. She recently retired as an administrator at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, College of Public and Community Service. Diane is a founding member and has served on the editorial board of Survival News since 1986. She is also a member of the National Welfare Rights Union.

Mark Beach, Director of Communications of the World Council of Churches, conducted a taped interview that will be viewed during the roundtable:
Watch this video in a new window. The interview features the following two colleagues:

• Dr. Rogate Mshana provides leadership to the World Council of Churches Programme Area for Justice, Diakonia and Responsibility for Creation. Prior to assuming that leadership role, Dr. Mshana served as programme executive for Poverty, Wealth and Ecology.
• Rev. Dr. Nyambura Njoroge, Presbyterian minister and a leading theologian and ecumenist from Kenya, is the Programme Executive of the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland. She has published on theology of lament, gender and theology, the HIV pandemic and ecumenical theological education.
  Read Gender, Justice, Ministry, and Healing: A Christian Response to the HIV Pandemic, by Nyambura Njoroge (16 pp; 98 K)

Wilma Burren Dunbar, Coach for the Circles of Hope Ministry in Wadesboro, NC, will be addressing listening to the poor in the context of the local church.

BenSheldon, Program Director for the Transmission Project at UMass Boston. Through programs like the Digital Arts Service Corps, a national AmeriCorps*VISTA program, he works to build the capacity of nonprofit organizations that use media and the technology to strengthen communities. He will be addressing issues of media literacy as it relates to the poor and providing vehicles for voice for the poor.

Income Generation for Roma Families (Church World Service, Serbia: Advance # 3020564
Industrial Garment Center (SEFORA,) Peru: Advance # 3020741
Micro-Credit Program, Senegal: Advance # 14522A
Poverty Alleviation and Micro-credit in Mo-dega and Pepease, Ghana: Advance # 3020810
Prison Ministry, Senegal: Advance # 14524A
Restorative Justice Ministries: Advance # 982670
Transformation Project Prison Ministry, United States: Advance # 3020547