A Great Day of Helping without Hurting

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The Helping without Hurting conference at North Park Community Church was a fantastic day of learning, great food, and community. The volunteers and staff made 500 of us feel welcome and encouraged to be sharing in Steve Corbett's learnings about helping those who are materially poor.

At the heart of Steve Corbett's message is the need to:

  • move more quickly from relief efforts to development efforts
  • investigate what is truly needed by the people (rather than assuming we know what they need; to do this means commiting time and building relationships), and
  • ensure that the people being helped are active participants in moving forward. As Corbett said: “Development isn't done to people or for people but with people.”

Please note: You can click on the photos to see a larger version.

I'd like to thank Ron Burdock for putting together an excellent conference, and the many thoughtful folks who joined Churches Together London to share this good day.

We'd like to encourage you to connect with us so that we can let you know about upcoming meetings and events, and to help us all keep the excitement and value of this conference moving forward in the coming months.

Please consider coming to our next meeting, on Saturday March 3rd, 9:30am to 11:00am, at Village Green Community Church. We'll be sharing ideas about the conference, and talking about ways to incorporate these learnings into our lives. It'll be a great event, so come on out!

Ron Burdock (Director of Global Outreach at North Park) and author Steve Corbett. Churches Together London is one of North Park’s partners in this effort.
North Park members, Donna Ballantine and Vicky Lozada helped organize the hospitality, which included delicious African food by the World Cooks.

The conference is sparking lots of conversation about how to rework our charity efforts. Seen here are Paul and Sue Gowan from Village Green Community Church, which had a dozen members attending.

Author Steve Corbett brought energy and encouragement, along with studies and techniques available for free at the Chalmers Center for Economic Development.

 
Katie Jo Ramsey assisted Corbett by leading the discussion about helping locally. Ramsey stressed the importance of having people willing to walk together with people in need – a process that takes time and compassion.

A resource area at the conference included books from the Navigators Resource Centre (thanks, Dennis Funk!), and information booths from Vision Ministries (thanks, Jay Gurnet!), International Justice Mission (thanks, Ed Wilson!), and Compassion Canada (thanks, Bill Coleman!).

It was a great group of organizations to be part of.

Rob Hueniken and James Kingsley at our booth. We had copies of the books we recommend and an overview of our group.

The handout and display boards are available as PDFs below.
Click on the image to see the PDF of the handout from the conference, talking about Churches Together London.
Click on the image to see the PDF of the display boards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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