Lynette Bay is a NZ registered nurse and midwife, who has worked in many different and varied situations in the health field in Zambia, Zaire, Central African Republic, Sudan and now Kenya. In Kenya she partners with a Kenyan Organization called Changing Times, which has its work located in the Kibera slum–Africa’s second largest slum with over 1 million people. She is involved in teaching literacy to women and it’s exciting to see those who have never held a pencil begin to write and learn to read in Kiswahili. She has a team of four young Kenyans helping in this section of the project. Other activities include—tailoring, reading room, clinic and laboratory.

Gary Bekker serves as Director of Christian Reformed World Missions, the international missions agency of the Christian Reformed Church with ministries in over 20 countries. Previously he served as a professor of missiology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and as Academic Dean of Calvin Theological Seminary. His teaching and research interests included anthropology, urban missions, and church history. For seven years he lived in the Philippines serving as a church planter and theological educator.

Zakka Chomock is the team leader for CRWRC in southern Africa. He has worked as Justice Coordinator in West Africa for seven years and has deep passion on justice for the poor. He has been involved in community-based development for more than 20 years.

Joel Hogan is the Director of International Ministries for Christian Reformed World Missions. He served for 14 years in the Philippines as a church planter/developer, leadership developer, and country team leader. He currently works with six regional leaders to give leadership to 185 missionaries and approximately 200 volunteers with ministries in over 30 countries.

Joel Huyser is a civil trial lawyer, turned missionary. He has been in Nicaragua since 1996, where he helped found the Nehemiah Center for Transformational Development.

Daniel Ogutu Kogembo is the founder and director of Mathare Community Outreach which serves in Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The organization serves street children, orphans and destitute people who are among half a million people in this slum. The program also assists people living with HIV/AIDS.The program rehabilitates criminals and drug addicts living in Mathare. Daniel is involved in managing three primary schools, one secondary school and an orphanage. He has also founded the Outreach Community Church which has spread today to major towns in Kenya. Under the church at Mathare No.10 there is a Bible institute which provides training to slum pastors in Mathare Valley and Kibera, a nearby slum.

Daniel has been working in the Mathare slums for more than 20 years.

John Kok, Ph.D., is the Dean for the Humanities at Dordt College (Sioux Center, Iowa), Professor of Philosophy—teaching aesthetics and environmental philosophy—and Dordt's Director of Off-Campus and International Programs. He lived in the Netherlands for 12 years and has seen first-hand the socio-political-economic challenges faced by people in Nigeria and Cuba.

Rev. Shadrack Ogembo is the Director/Founder of Rural Evangelistic Mission (REM), an interdenominational ministry geared to reach Children, young people and their families with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ogembo has been working with the slum dwellers for more than ten years to rehabilitate the street Children in Kenyan slums. At the moment REM is working with the people living in one of the poorest slums in Kenya. Ogembo has traveled to North America in order to share with the churches, the needs and state of slum dwellers in Kenya and how they can be assisted to come out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

Davis Omanyo is the eastern Africa regional team leader for Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, based in Kampala Uganda. Davis is Public Health Specialist in International Health. He has worked for the ministry of health for four years, then 17 years with two churches-based organizations in Kenya. For the last eight years, he has worked with CRWRC as a Regional HIV/AIDS Coordinator for east and southern Africa CRWRC ministry team, CRWRC country consultant Uganda. Davis loves working with marginalized people and he believes that the major cause of poverty is injustice at all levels. He has traveled more than 15 countries worldwide.

Andrew Ryskamp is the Executive Co-Director for Christian Reformed World Relief. In that capacity, he oversees relief and development work in 30 countries. He has served in Bangladesh, Philippines, Sierra Leone and traveled extensively in providing evaluation and consultation to the work of CRWRC. He has a Masters in Development Administration degree from Western Michigan University.

Dr. James Calvin Schaap has taught writing at Dordt College for almost 35 years. As a writer, he has traveled extensively, doing feature articles on people in many areas of the world. Among his work, he counts books that feature stories about the lives of Laotian-Americans, as well as, most recently, Native Americans. He is a fiction writer, but has scholarly works as well, including a forthcoming essay on Indian boarding schools.

Peter Vander Meulen lived and worked in the Global South for nearly 25 years before becoming the Coordinator for Social Justice and Hunger Action in the Christian Reformed Church. His work includes poverty and social justice education and advocacy within and outside of the denomination. He is past co-chair of the Micah Challenge USA and board member of Bread for the World.