May 1, 1998 -- Close to 12,000 United Methodist Christian women from around the world will gather in Orlando, Fla., at the Convention Center May 14-17. Highlights of the event follow:
Highlights
Gospel singer and songwriter, Cissy Houston, will appear with her New Jersey-based gospel choir Friday evening. Ms. Houston, besides being a gospel recording artist, is also the mother of singer Whitney Houston. Native American a capella group, Ulali, will open for Ms. Houston.
Senior United Nations economic officer, Ruth Bamela Engo-Tjega, will address participants on the needs of poor women around the world. Native American leader Janine Pease Pretty on Top will talk about the needs of women and children in the United States. Ms. Pease Pretty on Top became the first woman of Crow descent to earn a doctorate. She presently serves on the National Advisory Council on Indian Education and as the president of Little Big Horn College. Both will appear Saturday morning.
Also, Saturday morning The Sistren Theatre Collective from Kingston, Jamaica, will use drama to confront problems facing women and the need for social change. This independent cultural organization has gained international acclaim for its work and has played a major role in Caribbean popular education in the regional women’s movement.
Theology experts and authors will lead the assembly in Bible Studies and reflection on social responsibility. Leaders include Tex Sample and Emilie M. Townes on Friday morning, both of St. Paul’s Theological seminary, and Elizabeth Tapia on Saturday morning, an ordained United Methodist Pastor in the Phillippines and professor at Union Theological seminary.
Women’s Rights Advocated
At the event, thousands of women will send letters to Congress and promote an international treaty to end discrimination against women.
They will speak out for the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which the United States Senate has not yet ratified. The United States is the only Western democracy in the world who has not signed the treaty.
CEDAW, also known as the women's human rights treaty, was adopted by the United Nations in 1979, and is a comprehensive document addressing the rights of women socially, politically, economically, culturally, and in family life. Many members of United Methodist Women already have been involved in advocating with members of Congress and face-to-face meetings with their senators, including women from the Orlando/Tampa area.
Workshops
Participants will attend two of more than seventy workshops on Friday and Saturday afternoons. Workshops range in topics but include Caregiving and Caregivers; Simplifying Your Lifestyle in a Consumer Society; Violence in the Home; Making a Difference with Women in Prison; Stand for Children; Toxics in Our Environment; Biomedical Issues: Who Decides?; Keeping Peace in a World of Injustice; Hate Groups and Hate Crimes; How to Work on Racism If Everyone around You is White; Addressing Gambling Initiatives; Rural Women’s Issues; Child Labor; Public Schools--Our Responsibility; Immigration Issues; Issues facing Teen Women.
Women Bringing Relief Supplies
Thousands of United Methodist Women members will be responding to the rash of tornadoes and El Niņo-related disasters that have been plaguing Orlando areas and other parts of the United States and world. They will bring truckloads of relief supplies to help replenish the United Methodist Committee on Relief’s (UMCOR) depot. UMCOR assists churches who directly help persons in need in the areas of emergency response, refugees, hunger, and poverty and have been active in tornado-plagued areas of the South.
Women will also bring materials and create hundreds of quilt in the exhibit area to give to poor and disadvantaged children.
Exhibits Area
In tune with social issues of the year, the exhibits area will be visual, walk-through, hands-on, and experiential. Still responding to the Ban Landmines campaign made popular by Princess Diana, United Methodist Women will be able to walk through a garden of plants, trees, and simulated explosions of landmines showing the affects of landmines on children.
Kathy Lee Gifford, Nike, Liz Claiborne, children as victims of the sex trade, and the soccer ball industry are subjects that have brought to the public light the child labor and sweatshop issue. Women will walk through the close, horrid conditions of a sweatshop, see the affects of agricultural labor, walk through a mining tunnel, witness the horrors of children victimized by the sex trade, and experience all aspects of child labor.
Hate crimes and abuse continue around the world. The Resisting Hate and Violence exhibit will help women realize violence, focus on it, and peacefully act out against it.
As the debate about raising minimum wage and welfare reform continues, the poverty exhibit will show the effects of these issues on children. It will look at poverty on every continent as participants walk through houses from around the world, see infected wells, look at conditions of schools, and experience a health clinic.
These are just a few of approximately 30 exhibits in Hall E-1 and E-2 of the Orlando Convention Center.
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