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MEDA convention to link human rights and business

If you want to talk about human rights, where else do you go than to the site of a new stateof-the-art human rights museum?

That museum, which opens this fall, happens to be located in Winnipeg, a MEDA heartland.

MEDA’s annual convention — Nov. 6-9 — will take advantage of the proximity for a unique exploration of how human rights issues connect with business and economic development. The theme: Human Dignity Through Entrepreneurship.

Veteran businessman and humanitarian leader Arthur DeFehr will open the convention Nov. 6 by making a “Business Case for Human Rights.” DeFehr is CEO of Palliser Furniture, which employs over 2,000 people in Canada and Mexico, and a founder of various educational and humanitarian organizations.

He served as United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Somalia and helped or-

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The new Canadian Museum for Human Rights, venue for one convention session.

ganize the emergency “unofficial” cross-border Landbridge program to provide supplies to Cambodia at the end of the Khmer Rouge period. He spearheaded links between church-related entrepreneurs in the former Soviet Union and the west, and remains active in food security, development and immigration issues. DeFehr was a member of the World Economic Forum and is a director of the Pearson Peacekeeping Center. Friday evening’s session will feature a prominent global promoter of human rights and women’s education, an area of specialty for MEDA. The speaker will be Ziauddin Yousafzai, father of Malala Yousafzai, the activist teenager who survived being shot in the face by extremists for protesting the Taliban’s limitation of education for Pakistani girls. Media reports have called Malala “the most famous teenager in the world.” Time magazine named her one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” Ziauddin is currently the United Nations Special Advisor on Global Education and also the educational attache of Pakistan in its consulate in Birmingham, England.U.S. network journalist Laura Ling will speak Saturday evening on her “Journey of Hope” as a captive in North Korea. In 2009, while reporting on the trafficking of North Korean women, Ling was arrested and held captive for 140 days. Pastor/businessman Jim Miller will speak Sunday morning on “Faith Without Veneers.” He is founder and CEO of JMX Brands, parent company of DutchCrafters, the world’s largest web-only retailer of Amish furniture and home goods. Miller served as pastor at Covenant Mennonite Fellowship in Sarasota from 2012-2014. A pre-convention tour on Nov. 5 will take visitors to Churchill, Man., to see polar

bears in their native habitat. The excursion includes air travel from Winnipeg and an escorted day in a heated, washroom-equipped Tundra Buggy with a platform for optimal viewing and photography.

Other convention tours include: • Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the country’s newest national museum, is located at The Forks, close to the convention hotel. The brainchild of Winnipeg businessman Israel Asper, the newly-opened museum aims to increase understanding and awareness of human rights and ignite an informed global conversation.

• Tall Grass Prairie, an iconic Mennonite-owned bakery, celebrates the craft of bread, milling its own whole-grain flour on the premises using stone mills. Tour the bakery and take part in making your own mini loaf of bread. • Winnipeg’s French Quarter in St. Boniface contains the largest French-speaking population west of Quebec. Visit the remains of St. Boniface Cathedral-Basilica, final resting place of Louis Riel, Métis leader and founder of the Province of Manitoba. • The town of Altona is home to two leading Mennonite-owned businesses — Golden West Broadcasting (40 radio stations across Canada) and the employee-owned Friesens Corporation, North America’s premier book printer. You’ll also visit the Starlite Hutterite Colony and see how communal culture and values combine for a successful farm business model. • For more than a century Loewen Windows has been an industry-leading producer of windows and doors in Steinbach, Man. Tour the factory and then visit the Mennonite Heritage Village, which showcases pioneer life and features Canada’s only working windmill.

More than 30 seminars on business, faith and ethics will be presented on topics such as: • Human rights, peace and business • Your first job after college • First Nations people and mainstream businesses • Garment ethics: When cheap is costly • When to sell the family firm • Business as peace work • Stories from young entrepreneurs • Luke: Gospel of management • Work/family balance: Will your kids love your job?

For more information go to www.medaconvention.org ◆