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GLOBAL ANGLICAN MEET WILL CRUSADE AGAINST POVERTY AND AIDS
Cape Town – 27 November 2006
The United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals of halving extreme poverty and halting the spread of HIV and AIDS by 2015 will be adopted as the crusading mission of the international Anglican conference to be held in South Africa March 2007.
The conference titled “Towards Effective Anglican Mission” (TEAM) will be hosted by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa(ACSA) at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg from 7 to 14 March 2007 and will bring together key representatives from the worldwide Anglican Communion .
The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, will deliver the keynote address while Dr Steve de Gruchy, Director of Theology and Development in KwaZulu-Natal and the editor of Theology for Southern Africa, will speak on poverty and sustainable development.
“International development is not something that stands isolated from mission, but is integral to it,” says The Most Reverend Dr. Williams.
“The TEAM meeting represents the best opportunity Anglicans will have to put the extraordinary human resources of our Communion at the service of the most vulnerable in our own local communities as well as the rest of the world.”
The TEAM Steering Committee outlined seven objectives for the conference, which include the sharing of the African experience with others in the Anglican Communion, critically reviewing the response of the Anglican Communion to the Millennium Development Goals and encouraging others to collaborate further towards achieving the goals.
“As primates we committed ourselves through the Dromantine meeting in 2005 to play our part in encouraging leaders of the nations to meet the Millennium Development Goals,” Williams said.
“How we prepare for the conference and make our various contributions to it will be of great importance in the coming months.”
Anglican Primates will join an estimated 400 delegates at the conference which will be open to the public.
Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, ACSA Primate and TEAM Convenor, said: “Jesus didn’t come to save the Church. He came to save the world.
“This conference affords all of us, not only the Anglican Communion, the opportunity to interact with specialists in the field of social development, as well as practitioners in the areas of social development and HIV and AIDS.
“Through these interactions we will be able to create relevant programmes that will seek to alleviate poverty in keeping with the Millennium Development Goals.
“To be a Christian means to participate in God’s work in the world in partnership with others – both within and outside the Christian church – to make our communities, our society and our world a place that is closer to God’s vision of shalom.”
At a March 2001 meeting of Anglican Primates, Ndungane was entrusted with the responsibility of moving the Anglican Communion forward by addressing the vital social issues of poverty, trade debt and HIV andAids.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, billions of people still lack access to clean water, millions of children die each year from preventable diseases and, in some countries, HIV and Aids is wiping out all the gains in life expectancy of the last 40 years.
The TEAM conference will bring together representatives of the Anglican Communion in the context of prayer and theology to share diverse experiences and views on specific social issues.
“Poverty and HIV and AIDS to are not merely Africa’s problems, they affect all of us,” said the Most Rev. Bernard Ntahoturi, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Burundi and Bishop of Mantana, who will attend the conference.
“When one of us is weak, we all become weak. This conference is an opportunity for us to formulate models that allow us to alleviate social ills and disease.”
Five Africans die every minute as a result of HIV/AIDS. Three-quarters of the 42 million people infected by HIV/Aids live in sub-Saharan Africa. At least 65% of the world’s people living with HIV and Aids live in Southern Africa.
The average population infection rate in Southern Africa is above 20%, with infection rates between 20% and 39% in South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Only Zambia has begun to contain the pandemic.
The TEAM conference will also include an exposition of the Biblical principles and Gospel imperatives on the mission of the Church in society.
“Food insecurity and poverty fuel the HIV and Aids pandemic, with hunger forcing people into increasingly high risk behaviour while at the same time lowering resistance to HIV infection and contributing to the earlier onset of Aids.
“The key to battling HIV and Aid s, poverty and other social ills is through dialogue and in the sharing of experiences,” said Delene Mark, chief executive officer of HOPE Africa and coordinator of TEAM.
“The conference presents Africans with an opportunity to share the African experience and to explore fresh and innovative strategies towards poverty eradication through the sharing of lessons learned and experienced.”
For more information on the conference, please contact:
Delene Mark or Jeanette Dick
Tel: +27 (0) 21 461 4640
Fax: +27 (0) 21 462 0387
Email: delene@hopeafrica.org.za
info@teamhopeafrica.org.za
Or visit the TEAM conference website at http://www.team2007.org