Edmonton store to contribute to Ten Thousand Villages sustainability plan
On June 27, 2018, supporters of the Edmonton Ten Thousand Villages (TTV) store voted overwhelmingly to grant its board the authority to gift $100,000 to the TTV program of Mennonite Central Committee (Canada), in a one-time attempt at a sustainability plan. The Edmonton store was the final partner to agree to the plan that also…
Supporting uprooted people around the world
There are more than 65 million displaced people worldwide—nearly double the population of Canada. The United Nations says this number is unprecedented and the need for humanitarian assistance is only growing. The crisis isn’t isolated to one region. People are being displaced all over the world, testing the resources and resilience of populations from Europe…
Sponsors provide a welcome into their community
There are 23 million refugees around the world, with 1.2 million in need of resettlement outside of their home country or region. In 2017, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) helped groups resettle 442 people through the Blended Visa Officer Referred (BVOR) program. That was about one-third of all people who arrived in Canada in that category.…
True connections
Walk into Hagar Association, a school in Be’er-Sheva, Israel, and it looks like almost any other school. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear children speaking both Hebrew and Arabic, and see them playing together—uncommon sounds and sights in the region. Hagar is a bilingual school for 330 children of Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian citizens of…
Supplying food to people displaced by violence
Agnès Ntumba remembers the day her husband and seven children fled the violence that took over their village in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I saw people being killed. They were coming to kill us, and we had to escape,” Ntumba said. About a year ago, her village of Tshilundu Ndibunu…
Open letter on Syria
“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (I Cor. 12:26). In February, we were part of a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) delegation to Syria, including Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo. We witnessed the devastation of war and heard testimonies of faith from people who have been living in difficult circumstances now for seven…
Bridging Borders in the ‘City of Bridges’
A new television documentary series featuring the work of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Saskatchewan is currently airing on City-Saskatchewan TV. Bridging Borders is a six-episode series produced by Wavelength Entertainment, a Regina-based production company. Set in Saskatoon, the “City of Bridges,” each episode depicts a relationship formed through MCC’s private refugee sponsorship program. From a…
MCC celebrates 75 years of service work in India
This year, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is celebrating 75 years of relief, development and peace work in India, making it one of the oldest international aid organizations in the country. MCC began work in India in 1942, in response to severe famine in Bengal province in which more than two million people died from starvation,…
MCC may allow exceptions to ‘lifestyle expectations’
The boards of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada and U.S. have approved the possibility of exceptions to the “lifestyle expectations” for some MCC personnel, although those parameters have not been completely defined. The updates came as the boards reviewed MCC’s human resources framework at their annual joint meeting on March 16 and 17, 2018, in…
New MCC Ontario executive director appointed
John Head has been appointed as the new executive director of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Ontario, effective immediately. He replaces Rick Cober Bauman, who transitioned to executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Canada last fall. In 2014 Head came to MCC Ontario as associate executive director, focussing on operations. Since the departure of Cober Bauman…
