Mennonite
Central
Committee

Presenter Biographies

Cathy Campbell

A lifelong food activist, Cathy Campbell currently serves as rector of St. Mathew Anglican Church - an inner city, multi cultural parish in Winnipeg, Canada. Her ministry explores how individuals and parishes may live out the food and justice dimensions of the gospel. Prior to her ordination, she taught food policy and community nutrition at Cornell University and the University of Toronto and held volunteer positions in a variety of non-governmental agencies. She is the author of a recent book, Stations of the Banquet: Faith Foundations for Food Justice, a Scripture-based exploration of the Christian story of salvation as a food story.

Stuart Clark

Stuart is currently the Senior Policy Advisor to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. For the past thirty years he has worked in the field of food processing, international agricultural development, food aid and farming. He served in MCC in Bangladesh and Nepal and was co-Secretary for the MCC Africa Department in the mid 1980s. His current work focuses on international agricultural trade rules, Canadian food aid and international development policy and the Right to Food in the international context. Stuart lives in Winnipeg.

Derek D’Silva

Derek has served with MCC Bangladesh from April of 1974 to present in various capacities in its Agriculture Program, working to resource poor farmers and institutions that work with the same type of farmers. Responsibilities included planning, budgeting, administration, liaison with government and other private institutions and staff supervision. Through his work he has visited Laos, The Peoples Republic of China, India, Nepal, Canada and the US.

Derek received his MS in Community Economic Development from New Hampshire College. He lives in Noakhali, Bangladesh with his wife, Yvonne Gonsalves and son, Alex. His two daughters, Alison and Arlene are currently studying at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA.

Lorne Friesen

Lorne grew up on a small farm in central Saskatchewan. He attended Canadian Mennonite Bible College and then the University of Manitoba, obtaining his B.Th., B.A. and B.Ed. While studying in Winnipeg he bought the 'Friesen homestead' which has now been in the family since the late 1800's. He spent the summers farming this land, which in those days helped cover the costs of his university education. After completing his university education, he went on to teach at Westgate Mennonite Collegiate in Winnipeg. In 1989 he returned to his farm in Saskatchewan and started teaching at Rosthern Junior College. Lorne teaches Outdoor Education, Mennonite History and a class on Sustainable Agriculture at RJC. For the past number of years he has taken RJC students to El Salvador and Guatemala on service trips. Lorne is also involved with Heifer Project International and volunteers at Shekinah Retreat Centre.

Lorne is married to Lillian Janzen who works at Shekinah Retreat Centre. They have two teenage children, both attend RJC.

Lorne and Lill enjoy trying new things on their organic farm. They have a number of sheep, a llama, and several alpacas. They grow alfalfa seed for the sprouting market, commercial hemp and other organic crops. They are also the distributors for Innovative Prairie Farm Families, a group of farm families who market their products to consumers in the cities of Saskatoon and Prince Albert.

Cathleen Hockman-Wert

Cathleen Hockman-Wert lives in Corvallis, Oregon. Currently the editor of Timbrel, a magazine for Mennonite women in Canada and the U.S., she has worked in church journalism for more than nine years. Together with Mary Beth Lind of Harman, W.V. she is writing MCC's upcoming cookbook, "Simply in Season". The new MCC cookbook will explore how the food we put on our tables impacts our local and global neighbors. It will show the importance of eating local, seasonal food - and fairly traded food - and invite readers to make choices that offer security and health for our communities, for the land, for body and spirit.

Roberta Miller

Roberta grew up on a small farm in northern Indiana. The farm provided much of their food - milk, beef, pork, fish, nuts, elderberries, cherries, and many vegetables. After graduating from Goshen College, she taught school in Ohio, Kentucky, and Michigan. In the early 90s, she was a graduate student at Michigan State University in the Department of Resource Development focusing on community development and food systems. She is currently the director of The Garden Project, a gardening and gleaning program of the Greater Lansing Food Bank.

Gideon Cyrus Makau Mutiso

Professor Mutiso is a Development Management Consultant from Kenya. He obtained his PhD from Syracuse University, New York, USA, in 1968. He lectured at Princeton University, Rutgers University, St. Johns University, Montclair State University and the University of Nairobi until 1979. After that, for five years, he managed the then largest circulation newspaper in Sub-Sahara, The Daily Nation.

In 1983, he founded Muticon Ltd., which specializes in development management. He has carried out more than two hundred consultancies for government, NGOs, private sector and donor agencies. The bulk of these have been on project evaluation and collecting baseline data for project/programme design. He has conducted consultancies in Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal, South Korea and USA.

In 1989, he created SASOL Foundation, a rural development NGO specializing on arid and semi arid lands development. It has built four hundred sand dams among other activities. This year it won the UN best practices award.

Prof. Mutiso has authored ten books and over eighty professional papers on development, including training, education, environment, governance, management, gender, organizational development, participation, strategic planning and capacity building.

Prof. Mutiso has supervised the construction of 500 sand dams for water harvesting.

Dan Nagengast

Dan grew up on a dry land wheat farm in Western Nebraska and attended the University of Nebraska and Columbia University School of Law. He worked in New York City and then Boston, before joining Peace Corps in 1977 and serving three years as an extension agent in Sierra Leone and Mali, West Africa. He then directed an integrated rural development project in Senegal for Church World Service. He returned to the U.S. in 1984 and served 6 years as Kansas Regional Director for CWS. At that time he also began market gardening vegetables and fresh cut flowers with his wife, Lynn Byczynski. He became Director of the Kansas Rural Center in 1991, and has organized numerous marketing projects serving small farmers. At present, he directs projects investigating antibiotic resistance in livestock and promoting value-added processing for smaller farms and horticultural production in low-cost hoop houses. He still farms in Lawrence and assists his wife in producing her monthly newsletter, "Growing for Market". He serves as Co-Chair of Governor Sebelius' Rural Life Task Force.

Alberto Rodriguez

Alberto was born in Greeley, Colorado and traveled the Colorado and Texas migrant trail for twenty years. His father and mother were both migrants all their lives. He has worked sugar beats, onions, pinto beans, corn, tomatoes, cherries, and cucumbers. Alberto has received his B.A. and M.A. in History from the University of Texas-Pan American. He has participated with programs such as College Assistance Migrant Program that help migrant students to succeed in south Texas schools and beyond. Alberto cares deeply about the way globalization has affected both sides of the border and the migrant trails and has a lived and an academic perspective on the impact of globalization on migrant workers.

Henry Rempel

Henry Rempel, a Senior Scholar in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba, served as a professor in that department for over three decades. He also served for two years as Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Botswana. In addition to teaching responsibilities he has served as Policy Analyst to the China Program within Canadian International Development Agency. He has provided consulting and evaluation advice for MEDA on projects in Haiti, Tanzania and Bolivia. His most recent publication is A High Price for Abundant Living: The Story of Capitalism, (Herald Press, 2003).

Marg Rempel

• grew up on a dairy farm in western Manitoba, Canada.
• post secondary education in English, History, & Religious Studies
• married Ron Rempel in 1975 & served as MCC volunteers in NE Brazil till 1978
• returned to Manitoba to purchase the family farm, which Marg and Ron operated together until his death 13 months ago. Marg continues to farm on her own, with a 500 sow farro-to-finish hog enterprise as well as cropping 1500 acres of cereal grains, oil seeds, and forages.
• member of Steinbach Mennonite Church
• agriculture related interests and activities include 4-H leader for 6 years, writing an agriculture policy comment column for 5 years, serving as an elected delegate with Keystone Agriculture Producers for 8 years (our provincial general ag. policy organization) including 4 years as an Executive member, founding board member of the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council and served on that Executive for 7 years, member of agricultural advisory committee for federal member of Parliament, served on the Sectoral Advisory Group for International Trade: Agriculture and Food Sector (national advisory body) for 3 years, director on Board of Canadian Foodgrains Bank for 7 years including 4 years as board chair.
• currently co-chairing the fund-raising campaign to build a new Community Cancer Care facility in Steinbach, Manitoba.
• mother of three young adult children

Mike Woolverton

Mike is professor and chair of the business department at Bethel College, North Newton, KS. He has previously taught at Purdue University, Arizona State University, Dartmouth College, Ohio State University and the University of Missouri. He has also taught in international settings such as Tokyo, Japan and Archamps, France. Mike has published widely in the areas of agribusiness marketing and management and has been a consultant for agribusiness managers in Turkey, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emerits and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mike and his wife, Ann are Kansas natives who returned to Kansas in 2001 and live in North Newton.