Parliament of Worlds Religion 2009 Melbourne Australia

Author(s): Parliament of the World’s Religions
Publisher: USA Parliament of the Worlds Religions

Page 243

PROGRAM DESE
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Discoveries from 'Mapping' Faith Engagement in the International Development Challenge
Katherine Marshall
Tom Banchoff
Elias Szczytnicki
Quentin Woden
Room 208
Panel Discussion
Knowledge is key to effective action, but there are huge gaps in understanding the multiple roles that faith plays in development. Mapping' the ways in which faith leaders, organisations and communities are currently addressing development challenges is a vital place to start. The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University brings together different approaches to the question of how religion forms part of the public conversation on human rights, peace and democracy. In collaboration with the World Faiths Development Dialogue, the Berkley Center has explored the work of faith-inspired organisations, transnational, national and local, across different world regions and on major development challenges, including health, governance, agriculture and gender. The session will reflect on underlying questions, on the challenges of using knowledge resources better for social justice action, and on challenges ahead.
Katherine Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Visiting Professor in the Government Department and the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. She leads the Berkley Center's work on faith-inspired institutions working in development, involving a series of regional background papers and consultations with academics and practitioners, and a series of reviews of development topics.
Professor Banchoff is director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Associate Professor in the Government Department and the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Professor Banchoff is editor of 'Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism' (Oxford University Press, 2007) and 'Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics (forthcoming, Uxford University Press). Banchoff was awarded the DAAD Award for Distinguished Scholarship in German studies in 2003.
Elias Szczytnicki is Secretary General and Regional Director, Religions for Peace Latin America and the Caribbean. Before, he was Member, National Executive Committee, Consensus-Building Table on Fight against Poverty of Peru, and Member, Committee on Supervision and Transparency, National Program on Direct Support for the More Poor People Together. Mr Szczytnicki holds a Bachelor's degree in history from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and is a graduate from the Program on Jewish Organization Direction of the Leatid Center.
After engineering and business studies, Quentin Wodon worked in business. In 1988, he shifted career and joined for five years the ATD Fourth World, a inter-denominational grassroots and advocacy NGO working with the extreme poor. He later completed a PhD in Economics, taught at the University of Namur, and finally joined the World Bank in 1998. Since November 2008, he heads the Development Dialogue on Values and Ethics, the unit at the World Bank working on faith, ethics and development.
11:30am-1:00pm INTERRELIGIOUS SESSION
One Voice, Many Musics: Many Faiths, One Community
Andre de Quadros
Marcel de Quadros
Deepti V Patel
Room 209
Lecture, Film Screening, and Discussion
In August 2008, six choirs from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine and Sweden met for an historic festival in Petra, Jordan. It was the first time that such a large group of Arab choirs had ever performed together. This session will focus on the unifying power of music and its particular importance to an ethnic community that has for so long been separated by international borders. Documentary filmmakers Deepti V. Patel and Marcel de Quadros will talk about their film, Aswatuna', which tells the story of the creative individuals, women and men of different faiths, who were determined to organise this festival as a process of reconciliation and healing among the Arab community. In Arabic, Aswatuna, means 'unity through the voice'. Singing in a choir that includes Christians and Muslims expressing faith in humankind, faith in the divine and listening to this through the beauty of the music that they create, without understanding the language in which they sing, is truly a way of hearing each other. Audience members should expect a deeply moving, cathartic experience. A discussion will accompany the film screening.
Andre de Quadros is a professor of music at Boston University, director of the School of Music, and a faculty member in the university's Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations and its Global Health Initiative. He is a conductor, scholar of non-Western choral traditions, and a music and human rights activist. He co-founded the Arab Choral Festival and is an advisor to the International Federation for Choral Music
Marcel de Quadros has a background in high-end IT and marketing consultancy. He is also the co-director of BlueION Studios. With offices in Australia and the United Kingdom, BluelON Studios was founded as a platform for documentary filmmakers to experiment with alternative views, positive human stories and new media projects.
Deepti v Patel is a solicitor advocate. She is Arts and Culture Executive at Hindu Council UK, City Hindus Network; Advocacy and Campaigns Lead with South Asia Forum; a trustee for Inter-Faith Youth (Kirsch) Trust; an organiser of the London Week of Peace and the charity Peace Alliance; and a member of St Ethelburgas Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, City of London Inter-Faith Forum. She is a company director of BluelON Studios and producer/writer of Aswatuna
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