Dhandevi Seaming (32) reading bible at her home, ShivNagar community ,Tikapur, Western Nepal.TF Partner:Sagoal

I’m very pleased that we at St Mary’s University, Twickenham have support from several agencies for our conference ‘Engaging with Poverty in the Early Church and Today’ which takes place over Friday 4 and Saturday 5 December. Here’s a link to the ‘good news’ story of the financial help we’re receiving from Bible Society and Caritas (Diocese of Westminster). This money is enabling us to bring speakers from other countries, notably Dr Christopher Hays from Colombia, and to provide three full bursaries to enable PhD students from developing world countries who are engaging with questions about poverty to attend the conference.

We’re also very delighted with the partnership between the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary’s University, Twickenham and our friends at Tearfund, Caritas (Diocese of Westminster) and the Hampton Fuel Allotment, three charitable bodies who engage with poverty alleviation and eradication today. Each has contributed time and expertise to the planning and delivery of the conference, and we’re please to be working with them on this project.

As part of the conference’s work, we wanted to ‘put our money where our mouth is’, and we are contributing a proportion of the registration fees to a local Christian charity, the Riverbank Trust, which does excellent work among vulnerable single parents (mainly mothers) and their families. Ellie Hughes, the Director of Riverbank Trust, is one of our speakers.

This is a really exciting conference and should lead to an excellent book: further information and the programme is available for download here.