David Evans (administrator)


David Evans served with the international relief and development organization, Food for the Hungry, from 1991 until 2013, most recently as the U.S. President of Food for the Hungry and a member of the four-person Global Executive Office that shares the leadership of FH's work internationally.
Previously, Evans oversaw the FH portfolio of USAID, USDA, and U.S. State Department funded programs in 10 countries in the areas of food and agriculture, health and nutrition, HIV and AIDS, water and sanitation, climate change, education, microenterprise, and emergency relief. He also has served as a country directory for FH, in both Chad and Bolivia.
Evans has served as Chairman of the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organization's HIV/AIDS Alliance and the Alliance for Global Food Security. He has served on the Board of the Millennium Water Alliance, Integral Alliance, Adonai Partners and the U.S. Congressional Hunger Center's Leland Policy Advisory. He also has served as distance education professor in food and agriculture at Hope International University.
In addition to the United States, Evans has lived and worked in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Bolivia". He is the senior editor of the book Biblical Holism and Agriculture: Cultivating Our Roots as well as a contributing author to the book Truth and Community Transformation.

Early life

Evans is the second of three children and was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on February 16, 1960. His father, Ned Llewellyn Evans was born in the predominantly Welsh town of Taylor, Pa. He got a degree in electrical engineering, which led him into plastics manufacturing and being the co-owner and chief engineer of a plastics company based in Scranton. Evans' father sold his share of the business and retired from active employment in 1993. Evans’ mother is Marlene Harris Evans, born in Scranton, Pa. Marlene worked as an administrative assistant at Bell Telephone Company. After marriage and the birth of their first child, she became a full-time homemaker. Fifteen years later, she began working again as a bank teller and administrative assistant.

Career

Early work

Evans began working with Haitian migrant farmers in the northern Pennsylvania in 1981. He was mainly responsible for assisting Haitians with social services and English language classes. Evans often says that this job led to his desire to work in the developing world. He also spent several years in Burkina Faso and Chad, where he worked with farmers and villagers in the areas of agricultural development and water resource development. This influenced him to further pursue relief and development program management as a career.

Food for the Hungry

Evans was first connected to Food for the Hungry in the late 1970s, shortly after he became interested in hunger issues. He came across an FH direct mail letter and started to contribute funds to FH every few months. At the age of 19, he became a financial donor to FH.
In the mid 1980s, he connected to FH while working in Chad, when the organization began operating there in response to the catastrophic drought and famine that was impacting the country. In 1991, while finishing his graduate degree, he contacted FH to inquire about open positions. His first job in FH was country director of FH Chad. He later moved to Bolivia, where he worked as country director from 1994 to 1996. He served until he left the organization in 2013 to pursue his lifelong calling of field work in Africa.

Achievements and Recognitions

In May 2003, Evans organized and sponsored an international conference on Biblical Holism and Agriculture held at Dordt College in Sious Center, Iowa. The conference was framed around the topics of the Agriculturalist and God, Humanity, Creation, Knowledge, Purpose and Ethics. A book was published from the conference presentations.
In 2003, Evans was senior editor of the book called Biblical Holism and Agriculture: Cultivating Our Roots, which was published by William Carey Library and addresses major issues concerning missions and agriculture, bringing relevance to the relationship of God, creation, and humanity in the context of ethics, agricultural science, economy, and globalization.
In 2007, Evans testified before the US House of Representatives and the US Senate on the importance of the international food aid in the 2008 Farm Bill legislation.
In 2008, Evans presented a workshop to the United States Department of Agriculture outlining the feeding challenges that the world was and would continue to face.
In February 2011, Evans made a presentation called "Responding to Climate Change: Helping the Developing World Poor Adapt" at a conference on climate change sponsored by the National Religious Partnership for the Environment and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. In his presentation, Evans said that the impact of climate change on the poor included hunger, thirst, flooding and disease.
In May 2012, Evans spoke at the U.S. government's "International Food Aid and Development Conference," describing how food and development programs have transformed poor Bolivian farmers into successful business owners and improved the nutrition of thousands of children.
In July 2012, Evans co-hosted, with Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, a satellite event during the International AIDS Conference. The event brought together faith-based organizations to discuss the role of the faith community in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Personal life

Evans received his bachelor of arts degree in international studies from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. During his freshman year at IUP, he sensed a very strong call to spend his life working on behalf of the poor and hungry. While in college, Evans spent a semester in Haiti where he saw the incredible needs in the developing world. After his experience in Haiti, he decided to pursue a degree in international studies.
After graduation from IUP, he served for three years with the Mennonite Central Committee in Burkina Faso and Chad, both of which are in French-speaking Africa. Following a few short-term assignments with a French NGO and the Peace Corps in Africa in the late 1980s, he entered Penn State University as a research assistant in the graduate school of agricultural economics. He received a master of science degree in agricultural economics from Penn State in 1991. He moved shortly after that to Chad, with his wife Susan, where he began to work with Food for the Hungry.
Evans met his wife Susan at Maranatha Christian Church in State College, Pa., in May 1989. They married in May 1990. Susan is a homemaker and currently works as a park naturalist. She has served in the past as a biology and science teacher at several private schools. They have two children, Kathryn Joy Evans, a university freshman and Bronwyn Dorothy Evans, a high school sophomore.

Publications