C. Richard Parkins
Richard Parkins recently completed fourteen years of service as director of Episcopal Migration Ministries - the refugee and immigration assistance and advocacy arm of The Episcopal Church. Richard has worked in the refugee field for the past 28 years, commencing his career as director of operations for the US Office of Refugee Resettlement in 1980 and serving in various capacities with non-profit resettlement agencies including Lutheran Refugee and Immigration Service and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. From 2006-2008 Richard served as chair of the Refugee Council USA- the major U.S. coalition of refugee assistance and refugee rights organizations. In May 2008, Richard was a member of an Episcopal-Lutheran delegation to the enthronement of Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul and used that occasion to understand more fully the circumstances facing returning refugees and IDPS subsequent to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Plan.
In 1998, Richard was a part of a church visit to the Sudan under the
leadership of the late Marc Nikkel. In addition to time with Sudanese
refugees in the Kakuma camp in northern Kenya, this church mission traveled
extensively in the Diocese of Bor with Bishop Nathaniel Garang and Marc
Nikkel. In that same year, Richard was a representative of The Episcopal
Church to a roundtable of the Sudan Council of Churches where he was also
hosted by the then Bishop of Renk, Bishop Daniel Deng Bul. Since his early
work with Marc Nikkel, Richard has been an advocate for a more robust policy
by the USG in advancing the rights and welfare of the southern Sudanese
community in their struggle for justice and peace and was a part of the
initial efforts to establish AFRECS.
Richard's career has included consultancy work for The Ford Foundation in
India, the Asian Development Bank in Malaysia, the World Bank in Thailand,
and the UNDP in Jamaica. Following his graduate training at the University
of Pennsylvania, Richard taught at San Francisco State University.