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NEWS RELEASE for immediate release
United Methodist Community Developers Program to Hold Training Event

Contact:

Office of Public Relations
Lesley Crosson

475 Riverside Drive
Room 350
New York, NY 10115

Tel: (212) 870-3916
Fax: (212) 870-3748

E-mail:
lcrosson@gbgm-umc.org
Substance abuse, welfare reform, housing and economic development, fundraising, team-building, and conflict resolution are just some of the topics that the United Methodist Community Developers Program will explore at its national training event in Little Rock, Ark., Nov. 7-11. The local Black Community Developers (BCD) ministry at Theressa Hoover United Methodist Church will host the event and sponsor a climactic banquet to celebrate its own 20th anniversary on Nov. 10.

Over 100 pastors and laity, including church-based community organizers, are expected to attend the training event. They represent a network of more than 30 projects operated by racial-ethnic minority churches in 15 states, with support from the denomination's 33 year-old Community Developers Program. The churches work with partners in their communities to offer social services and to bring about social justice, systemic change, and economic development. Leaders from at least eight new or impending projects will attend the training event and an orientation.

With a focus on community organizing and development strategies, tactics and concerns, the training event will feature workshops, plenary presentations, and group dialogues, as well as worship and Bible study. Topics to be explored include organizing multiculturally, building housing, forming non-profit community development corporations, creating web sites, and organizing to respond to HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, violence, and other health concerns in racial minority communities.

The Rev. Minerva Carcaņo, a district superintendent in the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference, will offer a theological context in her keynote address. A popular preacher across the denomination, Carcaņo previously directed the Mexican American Program at Perkins School of Theology, part of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She supervised two community developer projects in the last two decades, as a pastor in McAllen, Texas, and a district superintendent in Albuquerque, N.M., the first U.S. Hispanic woman to hold that position in The United Methodist Church. She also helped organize and lead an ecumenical cooperative ministry serving Hispanic residents of Albuquerque.

The culminating banquet will recognize all projects and personnel with two decades of service, including Hoover's BCD project. The guest speaker will be Roy DePriest, President and CEO of the National Congress for Community Economic Development, based in Washington D.C. For 31 years, NCCED has been the trade association and advocate for the community-based development industry, representing today over 3,600 community development corporations (CDCs) nationwide. CDCs produce affordable housing and create jobs and services through business and commercial development activities.

The Community Developers Program, administered by the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, is supported by the churchwide Human Relations Day offering and by donations through the General Advance (Code #982143-6, "Churches Saving Communities"). For more information, contact Ruth M. Lawson, Executive Secretary, Community Ministries/Development , at GBGM, Room 1548. Telephone: 212-870-3821. E-mail: rlawson@gbgm-umc.org. Also, Deborah Bell, Hoover UMC, telephone: (501) 663-9621.
General Board of Global Ministries
United Methodist Church
475 Riverside Drive - New York, New York 10115
1-800-UMC-GBGM