Four ways MCC is responding to COVID-19
Things like frequent handwashing and social distancing have become the new normal. This is life during the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures help reduce the spread and keep everyone safe. We’re all in this together. But the hardships we bear are not the same. Some of our neighbours will be faced with impossible choices like staying…
MCC invites community to participate in day of prayer
Kitchener, Ont.—In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mennonite Central Committee is inviting supporters to join the organization in a day of prayer on Wednesday, March 25. “Times of uncertainty call us to reach out to the most vulnerable in our community: those locally and globally who will be most affected by this crisis,” MCC Ontario…
Water from stone
With a series of quick, practiced strokes, Aïchatou Hamidou clears the area around a newly built latrine with a long broom made from dry grass. After the trash and waste are swept into a tidy pile and safely disposed of, she unties the brightly patterned red handkerchief over her nose and mouth and adjusts the…
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…
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…
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…
