Celebrate Salvadoran Food and Music At St. Paul's

The following is an announcement from :

Members of the community are invited to a celebration of Salvadoran food and music hosted by Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Lynnfield and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Chelsea.  Proceeds from the event will benefit a joint trip to El Salvador to determine the potential for returning to the Central American nation with local high school students.

Adult youth group leaders from each parish have scheduled the mission discernment trip to El Salvador for the coming Fall.  In an effort to raise money for this first trip, the committee has invited Noah Bullock, executive director of the Salvadoran host Fundacion Cristosal, to be the keynote speaker at the event on April 28th.

“We’re thrilled that Noah Bullock will be keynoting the event on April 28^th,” said St. Paul’s High School Youth Minister Paul Bowen.  “His organization, Fundacion Cristosal, has made tremendous inroads in human rights development in El Salvador.” 

The Cristosal Foundation offers professional and technical training and support in the areas of human rights advocacy, citizen formation, legal counseling, as well as community development and organization.  This local partnership with Cristosal is aimed at helping area youth build bridges between Salvadorans and North Americans through exchange visits, work projects and educational experiences.

“With the help of the Lynnfield and Chelsea communities, this trip to El Salvador will pave the way for our youth to safely visit this developing nation,” said Reverend Edgar Gutiérrez-Duarte, Vicar, St. Luke’s - San Lucas Episcopal Church, Chelsea MA. “As global citizens, our young people recognize a combined responsibility to advocate for human rights and to support development efforts.” 

With increasing rates of poverty and violence in El Salvador, Foundation Cristosal implements a human rights approach to development assistance.  This approach recognizes the poor as subjects of rights rather than beneficiaries of goodwill and defines the goal of poverty reduction in terms of a global obligation, rather than a charitable cause.  Their strategy is to combine efforts to build citizenry, defend rights, and advocate for justice with projects of brick and mortar.  The goal is to work with communities to build capacities that will enable them to organize, exercise their rights as citizens, and speak out as actors in their own processes of development.  To learn more about Cristosal, visit www.cristosal.org.

The event is Saturday, April 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 127 Summer Street, Lynnfield. Tickets are $25, please order by Saturday, April 21. Call Lauren at 781-334-4594 or email office@stpaulslynnfield.org.