Georgetown University: Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs: Workshop on Global Development with Faith-Inspired Organizations in Africa and Europe

June 24-25
Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands
Convened by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, the Institute of Social Studies, and the World Faiths Development Dialogue

The workshop in the Hague on June 24 and 25 at the Institute of Social Studies will bring together a group of engaged practitioners and researchers who have an active interest in the intersections between religion and international development. The purpose is to take stock of the wide range of ongoing work by different organizations that are, in varying ways, inspired by religious faith, but more important, to explore the policy implications that emerge from their interactions with development organizations.   The specific focus of the workshop will be on emerging challenges including questions arising because of different perspectives on cultural practices, issues around governance and accountability, links to sectoral programs supported by international financing agencies, and practical issues such as blockages in funding channels.

The workshop forms part of broader research programs underway in both the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. 

The work will build on prior meetings of the Knowledge Centre Religion and Development (www.religion-and-development.nl), which reveal the challenges that may arise from different cultural approaches to development issues.  ISS maintains a working relationship with the Knowledge Centre.

The Berkley Center Program involves a three year investigation of the work of faith-inspired development organizations in the development field in different regions of the world, supported by the Henry R. Luce Foundation.  To date, this work has covered the United States and the Muslim world.  A consultation in the fall of 2008 will focus on Latin America, and in the Spring 2009, East and South Asia.  The overall purpose is to establish a basis of information and database and to highlight policy issues that arise.  The end product is expected to be a publication but contributing both to the knowledge base and to policy dialogue on relevant issues is a central and continuing objective.  More information is available on the Berkley Center website here. 

Interviews with participants, a background paper, and detailed agenda will be posted on this site and on the ISS site as they become available.

For more details, please contact Katherine Marshall: km398@georgetown.edu

Co-Conveners:
Katherine Marshall
Katherine Marshall has worked for over three decades on international development, with a focus on issues facing the world’s poorest countries. She is a senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and Visiting Professor. She is also a senior advisor for the World Bank. Her long career with the World Bank (1971-2006) involved a wide range of leadership assignments. From 2000-2006 her mandate covered ethics, values, and faith in development work, as counselor to the World Bank’s President. She led the Bank's work on social policy and governance during the East Asia crisis years. As a long time manager she was involved in many task forces and issues, among them exercises addressing leadership issues, conflict resolution, the role of women, and issues for values and ethics.  She is the Executive Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue and a core group member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Council of 100, an initiative established to advance understanding between the Islamic World and the West.

Gerrie Ter Haar
Gerrie ter Haar is Professor of Religion and Development at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands.  She is Vice-President of the International Association for the History of Religions.  Much of her work has concerned the study of religion in Africa, and she has published widely on this subject as well as on comparative issues.  She is one of the founders of the Knowledge Centre on Religion and Development, which she continues to serve in an advisory role.  She is currently chair of its advisory council.  In 2006, she was coauthor of 'The Role of Religion in Development: Towards a New Relationship between the European Union and Africa', which won an essay prize awarded by the European Journal of Development Research (vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 351-367).

Participants:

Husnul Amin, Institute of Social Studies
Husnul Amin is a PhD student at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.  Originally from Pakistan, he is studying Islamic institutions and development discourse in his home country, with emphasis on poverty alleviation. The study is constructed on three levels of analysis - Islamic political parties, Islamic religious schools (madrassas) and individual ulama. His study aims to explore how, and to what extent, issues concerning poverty are debated in theoretical discourses and in the practical activities of political parties, religious schools and religious scholars in Pakistan.

Brenda Bartelink, University of Groningen
Brenda Bartelink is a PhD student at the Faculty of Religious Studies, at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. In her research she aims to analyse discourses and practices on religion and development, with a specific focus on faith based development organisations. Interviews with faith based organisations in The Netherlands and Tanzania, together with a study of literature and organisational policy documents, will serve as a base for written case studies. Her previous research was concerned with Muslim women and development, on which she published together with M. Buitelaar: ‘The challenges of incorporating Muslim women’s views into development policy: analysis of a Dutch action research project in Yemen’ in Gender and Development, vol. 14, nr. 3 (Nov. 2006)351- 361.

Welmoet Boender, Stichting Oikos
Welmoet Boender (Ph.D. Religious Sciences, Leiden University, 2007) is researcher at Stichting Oikos, an ecumenical institute for church and development cooperation. Here, she is staff member of the Knowledge Centre Religion and Development, a cooperation of five Dutch faith-inspired NGOs. Trained in Anthropology and Islamic Studies, she has specialized in contemporary Islam with special focus on Muslims in Europe. She is one of the editors of Sharqiyyât, Journal of the Dutch Association for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Her Ph.D.-project concerned the role of imams in Turkish and Moroccan mosque-communities in the Netherlands; and she obtained her PhD on November 13, 2007, at Leiden University.

Omer Caha, Deniz Feneri Association, Fatih University
Professor Omer Caha is well-known in Turkey in the field of NGO's and is also actively involved in research and policy concerning poverty issues. He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences at Fatih University in Istanbul and has published in many academic journals such as the Euro Agenda, the Journal of Economic and Social Research, and the Turkish Journal of International Relations. In February, 2008, Professor Caha served on the Scientific Committee of the International Symposium on Poverty organized by the Deniz Feneri Poverty Research Center to promote cooperation and exchange of knowledge and expertise in the field of poverty alleviation. He is representing the Denez Feneri Association, the largest development NGO in Tukey with a worldwide network and ongoing projects in the areas of food, education, health, and shelter.

Jacques Dinan, Caritas Africa
After receiving a BS degree in Physics at the University of Manchester in the 1960s, Jacques Dinan worked in the teaching profession and contributed to pioneering work related to radio and television broadcasting in Mauritius. Then, he obtained a Diploma in Personnel Management at the University of Mauritius, after which he has worked as the Director of the Public Relations Office of the Sugar Industry, Public Relations and Personnel Manager at Deep-River/Beau-Champ Sugar Estate, and the Education Officer of the Ministry of Education. He has also held many prestigious executive positions: the Executive Secretary of Transparency Mauritius from 1998 to 2002, the President of the International Public Relations Association in 2002, and a Founder of the Institute for Corporate Governance in Mauritius in 2003. Presently, he is the Executive Secretary of Caritas Africa, the President of Caritas Mauritius, a Member of the Executive Committee of Caritas Internationalis, a Senior Public Relations Consultant in Mauritius, and the CEO of his own company, Infocom Limited.

Peter David Grant, Tearfund
Peter Grant is an economist by training and has degrees from Cambridge and the London School of Economics.  Prior to joining Tearfund, he worked for fifteen years with the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), where he has worked as the Deputy Director for Asia and the International Director. He has also worked for British Telecom International and as a consultant for Coopers and Lybrand. Since July of 2005, Mr. Grant has been the International Director of Tearfund since July 2005. He oversees Tearfund’s work with partners worldwide and its disaster management programmes, which help further Tearfund’s vision of relieving 50 million people from spiritual and material poverty through a worldwide network of 100,000 local churches. Furthermore, Mr. Grant is on the Leadership Team of Bedford Hill Baptist Church and has recently published the book “Poor No More” (Monarch, 2008), which aims to help Christians make a practical difference to world poverty.

Audu Grema, UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), Northern Office
As the Head of UK’s DFID Northern Office based in Kano, Nigeria, Audu Grema coordinates development cooperation agreements with about 13 states in Northern Nigeria, a region with a population of 60 million people and one of the worst poverty indicators in the world. He has BSc and MSc degrees in agriculture from universities in Nigeria, as well as a PhD degree from Cranfield University in the UK. He started his career in academics and taught for 11 years at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria before leaving to join DFID in 1997. At DFID, he first worked as an Agricultural Adviser and then veered into Aid Management, which involves policy dialogue, programme coordination, donor coordination and general programme development and monitoring.

Muhammed Haron, University of Botswana
Muhammed Haron has a BA Honours degree in Religious Studies and in Semitic Studies, a Masters degree in Social Science, and a Doctorandus Degree in Semitics. He has taught at many universities, such as the University of the Western Cape (UWC), the University of Cape Town (UCT), the National University of Malaysia, Stellenbosch University, and Rhodes University. During his academic career he received the Educational Opportunities Council Award in 1989/90, Mellon Award in 1992, and the Prestigious Scholarship Award in 1992/3 from the Human Science Research Council. He has published numerous articles, which mainly concentrate on Muslims in South Africa and include bibliographical, cultural, media, and socio-linguistic studies. He has also co-authored the book First Steps in Arabic Grammar and published The Dynamics of Christian-Muslim Relations in South Africa (ca 1960-2000) [Uppsala: Alqmvist, 2006]. Apart from the academic activities, he has been active in a number of committees in UWC’s Faculty of Arts. He represented the Faculty on the Senate’s International Relations Committee, and was its deputy chairperson. Furthermore, he held the the position of USAID TELP Coordinator at UWC between 1999 and 2000. Presently he is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at the University of Botswana (2000-2008).

Willem Jansen, Stichting Stek
Willem Jansen is a Protestant minister presently working for the Stichting Stek, voor Stad en Kerk in The Hague. Stek is a faith inspired organization working on behalf of the local church in the midst of the (secular) city. The main focus of his work concerns interreligious dialogue with Dutch Muslim
populations and intracultural encounter with immigrant churches. As a former student of Islam he has lived and worked in the Middle East and Pakistan. His main field of interest here is in Islam and human rights.

Piet Kuijper, Cordaid
Piet Kuijper is the Catholic Identity Coordinator at Cordaid, a Dutch international development organization that focuses on emergency aid and structural poverty eradication.  Kuijper's position was created in 2006 by Cordaid's Board, and he was asked to take on the role of deepening the Catholic identity of the organization through inreach programs that provide services and training for Cordaid's staff.  He organizes Catholic courses and celebrations for his colleagues in order to strengthen their knowledge of the Catholic social identity, and he seeks to connect Cordaid's approach to international development with the vision and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  Additionally, as his role within the organization has progressed, Kuijper is also focusing on dialogue with other religions traditions.  His work now also centers on developing an understanding of shared values and integrated elements of different religions traditions, and he seeks to facilitate a forum for this dialogue both nationally and internationally.

Nigussu Legesse, Inter-Church Aid Commission, Ethiopia

Richard Marsh, ImpACT Coalition
Born in London, Richard Marsh began his working life Australia’s largest non-statutory welfare agency.  He spent over 20 years working with faith-based organizations in various capacities including 9 years on the staff of former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.  He worked with Katherine Marshall on the instigation and development of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.  While he retains an interest in the distinctive contribution of faith based organizations to the development process, he is currently director of the ImpACT (Improving Accountability, Clarity and Transparency) Coalition (www.impactcoalition.org.uk) and is a regular commentator on transparency, accountability and ethical issues as they apply to charities and NGOs.

Dele Olowu, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Nigeria
Dele Olowu is a free- lance consultant on governance and capacity development. He was formerly Professor of Administration and Local Government in Nigeria and has also taught in many other countries including Netherlands, Ethiopia, Ghana, Botswana and Namibia. He has carried out research in Europe, Canada and USA besides Africa and has written many books and journal articles on the subject. He has served as adviser to African governments and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank as well on development policy management boards in Africa and Europe. He has pastored churches in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Netherlands and currently oversees the network of RCCG churches in Netherlands and the rest of Mainland Europe.

John Padwick,  Organization of African Instituted Churches, Kenya
John Padwick is a long-serving UK missionary of the Church Mission Society (Anglican), who has lived in Kenya since 1970. Since 1978 he has worked with African independent churches (AICs), chiefly in theological education and grassroots particip  atory development. In 2000 he was ordained as an Apostle in the Holy Spirit Church of East Africa, one of the Roho (Spirit) churches of western Kenya. Currently he serves as Director of the Centre for Communication, Research, and Reflection at the Nairobi headquarters of the Organization of African Instituted Churches, which is the continental umbrella body of the AICs. His interest is in exploring the relationship between the founding visions of the AICs and their response to contemporary life-challenges. His undergraduate studies at Oxford University (in modern history) were followed by adult education at the Institute of Education, London, and a PhD at the University of Birmingham on the historical development of Roho faith and ideology.

Elly Urban, Prisma
Elly Urban has just joined Prisma, a development organisation formed by evangelical and reformed churches in the Netherlands.  She is the  coordinator for the education programme that is being implemented in collaboration with ICCO/Kerkinactie and Edukans.  She is a graduate in
educational psychology with working experience in the Netherlands and in Africa, where she worked with the Eglise Réformée Confessante au Bénin. Since 2006 she has been studying theology part-time at the Protestant University in Kampen.

Lisette van der Wel, Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation
Lisette van der Wel (1957) is a Dutch anthropologist and theologian with special interest in the interface of religion and development. She has 25 years of experience in international development cooperation and interreligious dialogue, both with NGO's in Asia and Africa and with faith and development organizations in the Netherlands. Currently, she is policy advisor for Religion and Development in the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation (ICCO). Through this leadership position, she hopes to improve the relationship between the identity of the organization and the philosophy of life of the staff as well as to increase the visibility of religion in ICCO initiatives.

Workshop background interviews (in progress):

Husnul Amin, Institute of Social Studies
Interview

Welmoet Boender, Oikos
Interview

Omer Caha, Denez Feneri Association, Fatih University
Interview

Jacques Dinan, Caritas
Interview

Peter Grant, Tearfund
Interview

Audu Grema, UK's Department for International Development
Interview

Muhammed Haron, University of Botswana
Interview

Nigussu Legesse, Inter-Church Aid Commission, Ethiopia
Interview

Richard Marsh, ImpACT Coalition
Interview

Dele Olowu, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Nigeria
Interview

John Padwick, Organization of African Instituted Churches
Interview

Lisette Van der Wel, Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation
Interview


Msgr. Robert Vitillo, Caritas Internationalis
Interview