L to R: Gayle Zacharias, Kathryn Derksen, Michelle Hildebrand, Susanna Derksen, Judy Hildebrand and Jake Plett. (Photo courtesy of Judy Hildebrand)
Addlight Mudombo of Joseph Village, Zimbabwe with comforters she sewed by hand from used clothing. (MCC photo by Meghan Mast)
By Nikki Hamm Gwala
Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba
For Judy Hildebrand of Crystal City, Man., brightly coloured comforters add cheer to long prairie winters.
Ian Thomas, left, of Kindred Credit Union and Malcolm Gladwell. Kindred was an important sponsor of the MCC fundraising dinner. (MCC photo by Shoua Vang)
Malcolm Gladwell, a widely acclaimed writer and podcaster, drew a crowd of 650 people to a fundraising dinner hosted by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Ontario on Oct. 27 at Bingeman’s in Kitchener. As is his style, Gladwell wove together interesting stories, while the audience wondered about the connections between them.
Three of MCC’s 2022-2023 U.S. canning crew are pictured from left to right: Sylvan Stoltzfus of Narvon, Pa., Kyle Keeler of Corry, Pa., and Han Erb of Dundee, Ohio. (MCC photo)
As Mennonite Central Committee begins its 2022-2023 meat canning season, the need for food in Ukraine and other countries around the world is growing.
In Ukraine, millions of people have been displaced, and many are without access to food, water and healthcare since the Russian military invaded in February.
Blaine Gatez is pictured with his team at the Grow Hope harvest. (Selfie by Blaine Gatez)
“We all believe that in our core values it’s important that if there is something that you can do, you do it,” says Emily Lappage of Gatez Farms. She is the eldest daughter of Blaine and Laura Gatez, and has grown up surrounded by farm life and family values.
An unexploded rocket still lies in the garden of Nadiya O.’s destroyed home near Uman, Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of Uman Help Centre)
Before the fighting escalated in Ukraine this year, Nadiya O.* and her husband lived near the city of Uman, Ukraine. Together, they grew a vegetable garden and kept bees, selling their honey to make some extra cash. But shortly after the conflict worsened, her husband died from a heart attack.
Displaced by conflict and trapped by drought, this woman seeks water in the Afar region in northern Ethiopia. (UNICEF on Flickr.com / Creative Commons 2.0)
This UN-chartered ship left Ukraine on Aug. 16, carrying 23,000 tonnes of wheat bound for World Food Programme efforts in the Horn of Africa. (WFP/Anastasiia Honcharuk, used with permission)
For much of my life I associated Ethiopia with famine. I’m just old enough to recall the searing scenes from Ethiopia in the mid-1980s: windswept, dull-beige landscapes; skeletal cattle; distended bellies; flies; people crowding trucks laden with sacks of food; and charitable rock concerts.
Charitable Foundation Uman Help Center, an MCC partner, distributes MCC relief buckets, hygiene kits and blankets in Uman city, at a Baptist church, along with other humanitarian supplies. (MCC photo)
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada has joined other leading Canadian aid organizations to launch Aid for Afghanistan, a national campaign calling on the Government of Canada to immediately act to remove barriers that have blocked and deterred the provision of lifesaving humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan for the past year.
(Photo by Julianna Arjes on Unsplash)
When I was a young adult volunteer in Jamaica, part of Mennonite Central Committee’s Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program, I brought a pie to a Mennonite church-sponsored baking competition and was disqualified because my mango pie did not fit the unstated criteria of being a sweet pot
Jackie Karau (third from the left, front row) recently presented an information session on refugee sponsorship to a group from Foothills Mennonite Church, in Calgary. (Photo by Orlando Vasquez)
“I have learned that there is an overwhelming amount of need and suffering in this world.
Cyclists (left to right) Ernie Engbrecht, Edgar Dueck, Dave Neufeldt, Doug Wiebe, Ken Esau, Zachary Wirzba and Ron Esau raised $10,000 for MCC on July 15. (Photo by Annie Dyck)
The annual Hike-a-thon for Camp Valaqua involved walking the north end of Jumpingpound Ridge on June 11. (Photo by Jon Olfert)
This summer, Alberta supporters of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Camp Valaqua got physical to raise funds.
MCC partner Charitable Foundation Uman Help Center sets up a distribution event every week for food, hygiene supplies and other basic essentials for those living in or passing through Uman, Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of UMAN)
More than 100,000 people have fled to the area around the city of Uman in Ukraine as Russian military forces continue to advance. MCC partner Charitable Foundation UMAN Help Center distributes food; MCC hygiene kits, including toothpaste; and comforters to hundreds of people each month. (Photo courtesy of UMAN)
MCC partner Charitable Foundation UMAN Help Center provides food and other essential basics for people fleeing to, or through, the city of Uman, Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of UMAN)
As millions of civilians continue to flee the devastation of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, organizations like MCC partner UMAN (Charitable Foundation Uman Help Center) are working to support those who have left everything they know behind.
Participants at the Black Creek United Mennonite Church fundraiser in B.C. survey the goods for sale on May 29. Around $11,000 will be sent to MCC for Ukraine relief. (Photo by Marian Peckford)
The small town of Black Creek, British Columbia, showed its generosity with a sale for Ukraine relief, organized by United Mennonite Church, on May 29. The town has a population of just over 9,000 and is located on Vancouver Island, far from all of Mennonite Church B.C.’s other congregations.
The site of a camp that housed an estimated 64,000 Ethiopians displaced by violence in Afar state last year. As the violence shifted, these people returned home. (Photo by Rebecca Mosely)
A refugee camp in Debark, Ethiopia, set up to house people displaced by civil conflict. (Photo by Paul Mosely)
Rebecca Mosely of Mennonite Central Committee travels to meet a family who had returned home after being displaced from their home in the Afar region of Ethiopia for four months due to violence. (Photo by Rebecca Mosely)
Pastor Desalegn Abebe’s message to North American Mennonites is simple. Abebe is the head of Meserete Kristos Church (MKC), the Anabaptist denomination in Ethiopia, where 17 months of civil violence has led to 12 MKC churches being burned, 44 displaced and 163 full-time ministers and their families displaced and without income.
Cliff Gusztak with his mom Ashley hand over baked goods at his bake sale at Foothills Mennonite Church on March 27. (Photo by Jessica Evans)
Cliff Gusztak is a little boy with a big heart. An idea for a small cupcake stand evolved into a fundraising campaign that raised a total of $7,150 for Mennonite Central Committee’s Ukraine emergency response.
“I was maybe thinking that we could stop the war,” he said innocently but sincerely of his efforts.
Mother and daughter Marion and Irene Griese work together at a comforter at Niagara United Mennonite Church on March 26. (Photos by Emily Fieguth)
Women from the Westview Centre4Women work on the comforters.
A pile of comforters created at Niagara United Mennonite Church on March 26.
A basement room full of volunteers tie comforters at Niagara United Mennonite Church on March 26.
Bags of comforters ready for delivery to Mennonite Central Committee.
Niagara United Mennonite Church called its congregants and neighbourhood community together to tie comforters in the church basement on March 26. Advertisements in the local newspapers and in church bulletins invited anyone interested to gather for the morning.
Santosh Birhor works on his kitchen garden tomato plants. Through the support of CASA, an MCC partner, he has been able to drastically increase his yields and plant more diverse crops. (Photo courtesy of CASA)
When thinking about migration, it is easy to focus just on resettling refugees fleeing conflict or disaster. But the work Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) does with migrants isn’t just about resettling those on the move. Hundreds of millions of people are migrant workers, seeking higher-paying jobs far away from their families and homes.
MCC partner, Kharkiv Independent ECB Churches, evacuated residents, housing them at a local Christian school and at the House of Hope, a seniors residence in a village community 50 kilometers from Kharkiv. (The names of the people pictured are not provided for security reasons.) (Photo courtesy of MCC)
Try to imagine hearing air raid sirens scream out their warning. In your panic, you seek shelter. Your freezing fingers remind you of the warm coat you’ve forgotten back home. Or maybe you pack the car full of blankets and food, planning to flee to a safer location. You hope you won’t get stuck in a kilometres-long line at a checkpoint.
Doug Klassen looks forward to beginning his second term with planning for meaningful fellowship, worship and discernment at Gathering 2022 in Edmonton. His first term began in June 2019. (MC Canada photo)
Doug Klassen’s term as executive minister of Mennonite Church Canada has been renewed for a second three-year term beginning June 1.
“We received strong affirmation for Doug’s renewal from Joint Council,” says Calvin Quan, moderator for Mennonite Church Canada.
Maxym and Anya Oliferovski, pictured in 2021, are co-founders of New Hope Centre in Zaporizhzhia and lead church planters of the Mennonite Brethren church plant, God's Family Church. (MCC photo courtesy of Maxym Oliferovski)
A Mennonite Central Committee partner in Ukraine requests prayer in a video clip the relief organization posted on YouTube earlier today.
Andrea Shalay and three American staff members of MCC scrambled to leave Ukraine. (Supplied photo)
Russia has begun military operations against Ukraine, but North American Mennonite Central Committee staff who were working in the latter country are safe.
That includes Winnipegger Andrea Shalay, the charity’s peace engagement co-ordinator for Europe. Shalay and three other staff, all Americans, were evacuated from Ukraine more than a week ago.
In December 2018, Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike and her husband Christopher Eigbike visit the church she had served at while with SALT in 1982. (Photo courtesy of Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike)
Members of Brethren in Christ Church in Mpopoma township, Zimbabwe, gather to bid farewell to Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike at the Bulawayo Airport as she ends her SALT term there on Sept. 1, 1983. (Photo courtesy of Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike)
Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike, bottom right, poses with some of the second SALT cohort of 1982 during orientation in Akron, Ohio. (Photo courtesy of Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike)
In the summer of 1982, 20-year-old Sophie Tiessen-Eigbike was about to get on a plane bound for Zimbabwe. She didn’t know it yet, but this trip was going to change the trajectory of her life.
She was going to Zimbabwe for a year-long term with Serving and Learning Together (SALT), a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) program that was in just its second year.
The SALTers reunited at Martha and Brent Kuehl’s home on Aug. 19, 2021. Pictured from left to right, front row: Melody Steinman, Martha Kuehl and Lorie Yantzi; and back row: Nadine Moyer, Vi Martin and Marlene Letkeman-Holst. (Photo courtesy of Martha Kuehl)
The Winnipeg SALT unit circa 1983-84. Pictured from left to right, front row: Melody Steinman, Nadine Moyer, Annette Reesor, Vi Martin and Martha Kuehl; and back row: Marlene Letkeman-Holst, Thom Braun, Ruth Braun and Lorie Yantzi. (Photo courtesy of Nadine Moyer)
It has been well over half of their lifetime ago—“38 years to be exact,” said one of the six women who gathered on a warm August evening with their spouses to reminisce about their year of living in an intentional community doing voluntary service. One couldn’t attend the gathering.
Benjamin Unruh (front row, third from left) stands with refugee representatives in Moelln, Germany, circa 1930. Unruh, a displaced Mennonite from the Soviet Union living in Germany and a committed Nazi, negotiated with the Nazi government on behalf of MCC regarding a debt the relief organization owed. (Mennonite Heritage Archives photo)
Mennonite Central Committee has released the findings of its research on the organization’s historical entanglements with German National Socialism (or Nazism) and its legacy before, during and after the Second World War.
Mohamed Al-Attar, at right in blue, lost his wife, children and his home during the violence in Gaza in May. Rifqa Hamalwai, far left, and Khaled Abu Sharek, centre back, staff members from Al Najd, MCC’s local partner, visited Mohamed and his nephews, Yaser Dia Al Attar, bottom left, and Ali Tamim Al Attar, back left. All local COVID-19 protocols were followed in this photo. (Photo courtesy of Al Najd)
Mahmoud Alhalimi, and sons Kareem, centre, and Anas, right, are pictured in front of their still-standing house. (Photo by Sanabel Alhalimi)
A Gazan home that was destroyed during the bombardment. (Photo courtesy of Near East Council of Churches)
Nighttime was the hardest for Mahmoud Alhalimi. With the electricity cut and bombs falling, the hours were dark and loud, as he tried in vain to help his two young children fall asleep.
The Timber Bay Children’s Home at Montreal Lake, Sask., as it appeared in 1974. (Mennonite Heritage Archives photo)
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) supported an Indigenous boarding home that is under investigation by the Saskatchewan RCMP.
The Mounties say a complaint was made in 2020 about a death that potentially occurred at the Timber Bay Children’s Home at Montreal Lake, Sask., in 1974.
