Sharing stories that spell MCC
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), and one Saskatchewan congregation got off to an early start in celebrating it. Osler Mennonite Church chose Jan. 26 as “MCC Sunday,” inviting MCC Saskatchewan executive director Eileen Klassen Hamm to be its guest speaker. Celebration organizers invited congregants to come to church dressed…
Watch: Dispatches from a SALTer in Colombia
Our recent Focus on Education issue featured a reflection by Hannah Larson, a young woman serving in northeastern India with Mennonite Central Committee’s Serving and Learning Together program. If Larson’s piece didn’t give you enough of an idea of what SALT is like, watch the video below. The three-minute piece features Victoria Callow, who entered…
Ten Thousand Villages Canada shuts down corporate operations
Mennonite Central Committee Canada has announced the closure of the corporate operations of Ten Thousand Villages Canada, its fair-trade social enterprise. The closure includes the head office and distribution centre in New Hamburg, Ont., as well as Ten Thousand Villages Canada’s web store, wholesale operations and 10 remaining company stores, with the wind down of…
Their stories showed me how to be brave
In the last few months with Mennonite Central Committee’s Serving and Learning Together program, I have thought often about how we all use stories to communicate. And how sometimes I have found myself wishing I could politely use a bookmark to pause someone’s story when I wasn’t that interested in it. I’ve agonized over accidentally…
Join ‘The Great Winter Warm-up’
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) will kick off its 100-year anniversary celebration in 2020 by bringing together volunteers in Canada, the United States and Europe to make 6,500 comforters in one day. The Jan. 18, 2020 event—The Great Winter Warm-up—will jump-start MCC’s supply of comforters that are sent to people in crisis all around the world…
Understanding the impact of Agent Orange
Decades after American military forces used Agent Orange to further their efforts in the Vietnam War, this deadly chemical continues to impact the lives of Vietnamese people. Garth and Claire Ewert Fisher travelled to Vietnam in July as part of a learning tour sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) British Columbia. They went, says Claire,…
Learning to farm with droughts and deluges
The weather patterns in Nepal used to be regular about 15 to 20 years ago, says Durga Sunchiuri, who grew up helping his parents farm their land in the mountainous terraces of Nepal’s Terhathum District. Not anymore. Today, he says, the monsoon season lasts just a month or five weeks, instead of three to four…
Watch: MCC is 100
Mennonite Central Committee is gearing up to celebrate its centennial next year, and the relief organization has started producing a number of articles and videos to mark the occasion. You can watch one of those videos—a three-minute-long piece that covers MCC’s history from 1920 until the present day—below. Do you have a video we should…
Politics and paper cranes
As the policy analyst for Mennonite Central Committee Ottawa, I’m constantly engaging with Canadian politics. I mostly love politics, but it’s also so easy to get drawn into toxic and fruitless debates and arguments. In order to stay grounded, I’ve discovered that I need to regularly reflect on the roots of my political passion—so much…
Watch: “The Story of MCC Thrift”
The story of Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) thrift shops is given a unique retelling in a new video. Filmed in one camera shot, the video starts with the creation of the first thrift shop in Altona, Man. in 1972 and traces its growth into a North American-wide network of more than 100 shops that bring…
