Readers Write: August 2024

Responses to ‘Involuntary’

From resigned MCC’ers

For 17 of the past 32-plus years, we worked with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in four countries. MCC was instrumental in forming the values we try to live by today. We are grateful for this.

On our last assignment, during which Dave served as an interim representative (overseeing programing in a country), he was informed that a termination without cause of a local staff person who had worked with MCC for 27 years would take place.

We never expected to witness MCC talcing what we considered a non-restorative approach to a Human Resources (HR) situation. We felt it did not value “right relationship with God [and] one another,” as MCC proclaims. We felt so betrayed that Dave refused to carry out the termination and resigned.

Two years later, alarmed by the stories in the open letter from former MCC workers (as reported in “Involuntary: Terminated MCC workers call for accountability and change,” July 2024), we signed the “MCC, stop harming your workers and partners now!” petition, to hold MCC accountable.

We were given an ear by senior MCC staff after Dave’s resignation. Sadly, it appears Anicka Fast and John Clarke were not.

When we challenged MCC, saying we did not observe restorative justice principles included in their HR policies, MCC eventually acknowledged this and wrote to us privately, stating they were committed to talcing this omission into account, though the review would take time.

MCC’s practice of limited access to their HR policies is also problematic. Except for their Ethical and Professional Standards, and Whistleblower Policy, their policies are not accessible to a potential employee prior to signing an offer of employment or after termination, and they are not available to the constituency.

Ironically, in the Whistleblower Policy, MCC professes “the highest standards of transparency, integrity and accountability.”

Other secular organizations find their way. Doctors Without Borders provides a quantitative annual account on their website of reports of abuse and misconduct and their response. Just Outcomes works with organizations to align their HR policies with a restorative approach.

For many of our years with MCC, we were in leadership. Reflecting on our full participation in MCC systems gives us pause to consider how we may have caused harm.

We pray MCC’s leadership will find it possible to immediately and transparently respond to petitioners’ questions.

We expect public reports on how restorative justice principles are incorporated into HR policies.

–Dave and Mary Lou Klassen, Kitchener, Ontario (Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church)