Meet the 2007 ECF Fellowship Partners
With an emphasis on the idea of partnership, ECF will provide monetary grants, while the new Fellows will share their knowledge, experience and best practices with the wider Church in practical ways.  These might include some form of service, publications, workshops, or presentations.  The ECF Fellowship Partners Program is intended to foster the spiritual formation of people in Episcopal congregations.
    

	Millennium Development Goals (MDG):  Hoping to realize the enormous potential of working towards the U.N. MDGs, the Rev. Devon Anderson, former Associate Rector at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Minneapolis, MN, will work to equip people in the Diocese of Minnesota and beyond to implement global mission projects in their congregations. Read more . . .
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	Prison Ministry:  A doctoral student in Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, NYC, Ms. Rima Vesely-Flad is the founder and director of the Interfaith Coalition of Advocates for Reentry and Employment, and hopes to educate communities of faith about the criminal justice system, engage them in advocating for people with criminal convictions, and assist congregations in developing prison and reentry ministries. Read more . . .
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	Women's Empowerment:  Abuelas, Madres y Más (Grandmothers, Mothers and More), co-created by the Rev. Daniel Velez-Rivera and Ema Rosero-Nordalm, is a lay ministry working with Latinas raising children utilizing a popular storytelling tradition.  This project will engage facilitators and participants in creating curricula that will help women learn to work in groups, provide theological foundations for their ministry, and become compañeras y mentoras (companions and mentors) to a multigenerational population of women. Read more . . .

U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDG):  The Rev. Devon Anderson
"The U.N. Millennium Development goals have enjoyed much visibility and focus in recent years.  In many ways the MDG movement has electrified the Episcopal Church, coming at a critical time in the life of the Anglican Communion, and offering a rare opportunity for tangible expressions of reconciliation and partnership in mission across tense theological and cultural divides.  In them, the church has been offered a clear roadmap for living the Gospel call to justice and compassion for the poor.  The MDGs represent nothing less than a once in a lifetime opportunity to mobilize the faithful to rededicate our hearts, minds and resources to mission and in that process to save lives, reconcile with our brothers and sisters in Christ, build a more just global village, and in so doing, open ourselves to spiritual transformation and renewal.  Because the MDG movement does not prescribe specific ways to engage them, they evoke creativity, innovative thinking and youthful energy.  The MDG movement holds immense potential to organically change the Episocpal Church into a more hopeful community of people who come to recognize ministry to, and justice for, others in the name of Jesus Christ.

This project will equip the people in the Diocese of Minnesota and beyond to implement sustainable global mission projects in their congregations as part of the MDG movement.  The project will provide spiritual and tactical leadership to congregations, empowering them to partner across ethnic, cultural, geographic and theological divides in mission projects that are effective, substantive and transformative.

The effort willl serve as a pilot project with the goal of lifting up replicable training and empowerment models to the wider Church at General Convention 2009.  The goal is to try out models of cross-congregational, cross-cultural mission projects and to share our learnings far and wide as our contribution to the wider MDG promise."

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Prison Ministry:  Ms. Rima Vesely-Flad
"My overall objective is to educate communities of faith about the criminal justice system, to engage them in advocating for people with criminal convictions, and to assist congregations in developing prison and reentry ministries.  Through the Interfaith Coalition of Advocates for Reentry and Employment (ICARE) -- a project I founded in 2004 - I will continue to oversee a legislative agenda to restore the rights of formerly incarcerated people, and to implement a "Circles of Care" ministry program.  I will also begin publishing regularly in national religious publications, as well as church newsletters, about the expansion of the U.S. penal system.

Process:

1. Educate members of congregations about incarceration and reentry barriers through speaking and preaching, and assist them in developing prison and reentry ministries
2. Expand a coalition of faith communities, direct service providers, policy organizations, and regional denominational institutions to develop in a closely-knit network of advocates
3. Develop model statutes to remove barriers to reentry
4. Develop a model reentry ministry program to assist formerly incarcerated men and women
5. Organize faith leaders to advocate for the rights of individuals with criminal convictions"

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Women's Empowerment:  The Rev. Daniel Velez-Rivera
"Grace Episcopal Church's Hispanic Ministry provided a program in Spanish for women living in the Point neighborhood of Salem, MA -- an urban, disenfranchised community that is primarily populated by Hispanics -- called Abuelas, Madres y Más (Grandmothers, Mothers and More).  The program is a multigenerational women's spirituality and support group for Latinas raising children which I co-created with Ema Rosero-Nordalm.

Some of the challenges that the women addressed were communication and figuring out alternative ways to communicate with children that speak a different language than our participants and that have a different culture than the culture passed on to the children in their homelands.  The participants addressed their fears of what is out of their control and what might happen to their children once they walked out of the house; they talked about guilt that arose when they realized they were unable to help their kids with homework because of their own language barriers, or because they worked so many hours to support their families.  Part of the program provided role plays, so the women could "try out" situations to communicate better with their children.

Abuelas, Madres y  Más uses the popular storytelling tradition of multiethnic Latinas where the participants affirm each other's strengths, discuss their challenges and blessings, and express their faith in God -- their constant companion and sustainer.  The original particpants expressed their desire to be companions and mentors to other women in the Salem community -- they want to be a new generation of  apostles, especially with adolescent mothers.  As a result, the facilitators and participants will create curricula that will help women learn to work in groups, provide theologicial foundations for their ministry and to be compañeras y mentoras (companions and mentors) to a multigenerational population of women raising children."

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To learn more about the Fellowship Partners Program, please click here.