Experiencing Freedom

We all talk about freedom. But what is freedom and what is its origin? What does it have to do with human fulfillment, authority, and power?

A great deal of uncertainty surrounds these questions. As a result, we find ourselves progressively replacing personal risk and responsibility with rules, policies, and risk management directives. It is as if we were afraid of experiencing too much freedom, and thus willing to trade it for one of its many palliatives.

We are approaching what T.S. Eliot predicted in his "Choruses from the Rock"-- a society that "constantly tries to escape from the darkness outside and within by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good" or in our case, free.

But what if freedom were not something to be regulated but plumbed to its depths?

In the land of freedom, in the city that greets the world with the Statue of Liberty, New York Encounter invites you to a weekend of public discussions, exhibits, presentations, and live performances exploring the topic of freedom. Our hope is that through its festivities, people, and life, New York Encounter itself may be, for all who participate, an experience of freedom.

Displays

AVSI-USA is a non-governmental organization with non-profit status. AVSI-USA shares the vision and method of AVSI and seeks to communicate all the richness of AVSI to the U.S. public, with attentive openness to every possibility of working together with a diverse range of supporters, collaborators and institutions, offering them an opportunity to express their solidarity with others around the world and to further AVSI’s mission. Since 2000, AVSI-USA has grown steadily in experience, capacity and achievements, supporting initiatives in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, and Haiti. AVSI-USA has a headquarters in New York and an operational office in Washington, DC.

AVSI was founded in Italy, in 1972. Today, forty years later, AVSI’s programs are on-going in 38 countries across Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and East Asia with a consolidated budget of $50 million per year. AVSI’s portfolio is centered on long-term development interventions, with education as the primary point of entry and focus, with a mission of enhancing the dignity of all persons and valuing local initiatives and organizations. AVSI’s identity continues to be intimately linked with its origin, the impetus and energy behind its emergence and growth, which is the Christian experience as lived within the Catholic movement of Communion and Liberation. This experience broadens reason and makes possible a meaningful engagement with reality in all of its factors.

Contact us via www.avsi-usa.org, infoavsi-usa@avsi.org, or (202) 429-9009.

The MedConference is an annual medical convention, open to physicians, nurses, students and other medical professionals, sponsored by the American Association of Medicine and the Person (AAMP).

The aim of the MedConference is to rebuild a health care system characterized by cutting edge scientific and clinical research along with attention to the totality of the needs of the sick person. The organizers’ hope and goal is to restore a more human approach to patients’ treatment resulting in improvement in medical care.

This conference is an educational opportunity for health care professionals, including students, to re-awaken the ideals which lead them to embrace the medical profession and therefore to deepen in their humanity as they carry out their medical practice.

The next MedConference will take place on October 18-20, 2013.

Website: www.medicalconference.us

E-mail: medconference.aamp@gmail.com