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2003 Conference
   2004 Conference

"Restoring Broken Dreams"

Dear Friends and Colleagues:
I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center’s Seventh Annual Faith and Community Economic Development Conference, which will be held in New Orleans, LA.

This year’s conference curriculum and neighborhood tours demonstrate the spirit of partnership and collaboration that is taking place in Louisiana. We have organized a four-day educational event that promises to be one of the best faith-based events in the country. The four-day Church Administration and Management Institute focuses on church managers and administrators to provide them with the tools to become more effective and efficient leaders in their day-to-day management. The two-day Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Grant Writing Workshop will provide the basis for organizations that want to learn about grant writing and federal programs.

We are also continuing our efforts to meet your training needs by offering many new skills training sessions and panels. The conference will have over 44 workshops, several nationally known speakers, a gospel concert, community tours, a cruise down the Mississippi River, morning walks in the French Quarter, and many informative topics on daycare centers, housing and economic development, workforce development, churches and taxes, and health care.

The theme for this year’s conference is derived from the autobiography of Dr. Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart. Thurman was raised in segregated Daytona, Florida. During that time, schools there only went to the seventh grade, so Thurman’s family pulled together the funds to send him to high school in Jacksonville. However, when Thurman left for school, at the train station he was told he would have to pay extra to send his luggage. Buying the ticket had left him destitute, with no money to ship his trunk. Penniless, the boy sat down on the steps and began to cry. Then a stranger, a black man dressed in overalls, walked by and paid the charges. He didn’t introduce himself, and Thurman never learned his name.

When Thurman wrote his autobiography, he dedicated it “to the stranger in the railroad station in Daytona Beach who restored my broken dream sixty-five years ago.” That single episode was so powerful that he attributes his later strengths and faith to that single event. Each of us can recall an event, a person, a kind word, or gesture that gave us the confidence to move forward and to restore our broken dream. Not only is faith a way of knowing, but it is a form of knowledge. It is also one of life’s greatest teachers. A dream restored is faith in action! To be tested is good. The challenge of life may be the best therapy.

So, come to New Orleans! Find new faith-based resources and solutions you can use every day. Learn new things and help us to restore broken dreams!

Ernie Troy Hughes, Ph.D.
Conference Coordinator
Southern University Agricultural
Research and Extension Center