Mennonite World Conference’s general secretary wants Mennonite Economic Development Associates to work with churches to start similar organizations around the world.

“We dream of local businesspeople who experience business as a gift and a call in their everyday lives,” César García said Nov. 5 in an address at MEDA’s annual convention in Toronto.

Businesses are often well suited to implementing plans because they have clarity about what they do and why they do it. In the lens of a global Anabaptist fellowship like MWC, MEDA’s work of combining business with faith to create solutions to poverty can be worth emulating.

“MEDA’s 70 years of experience have produced inclusive, sustainable agrifood market systems, built upon gender equality and social inclusion, innovation and technology adoption, partnerships and contextual knowledge, environmental sustainability and climate action,” said García, noting his own personal connection.

In 1973, MEDA helped García’s church in Colombia start a foundation to help local entrepreneurs through small loans. That work continued for decades, providing opportunities to women and other victims of the country’s civil war.

MWC continues to “dream of local businesspeople who experience business as a gift and a call in their everyday lives,” he said. “We dream of local entrepreneurs who work together to help new entrepreneurs create sustainable business solutions to poverty like MEDA experienced in Colombia. . . .

“People of faith have the framework for the reasons why it is crucial to share their profit. They know why it is essential to create opportunities for entrepreneurs to start new businesses that will support others to replicate the same process. Love your neighbor as yourself. Let’s ask God for the courage to do so.”

Mennonites in Paraguay are taking that idea to heart. Conversations are taking place on whether MEDA Paraguay can make the leap to work with Mennonite Central Committee and MEDA as partners rather than recipients.

Werner Franz shared about Mennonites’ economic impact in his South American nation during a convention seminar.

There is an understanding that a partnership is critical, said Franz, a retired pastor, author and seminary professor.

In 1932, MCC began playing a “crucial role in the first 20 years for Mennonites to survive in Paraguay,” he said. MCC helped to build the Trans-Chaco highway and gave key support to growing a number of organizations.

MEDA was created in 1953 after MCC director Orie Miller gathered together a group of Mennonite businessmen. Its first projects were in Paraguay’s Chaco and Friesland regions.

“MEDA members wanted to share their faith, their abilities and their resources to meet human needs through economic development,” Franz said.

Mennonites make up about .5% of the population of Paraguay, a country of 6 million people. There are 20 Mennonite immigrant communities in the country.

Mennonites have achieved disproportionate influence in Paraguay’s economy in the 70 years since MEDA’s investment in the Sarona dairy, Franz said. Their communities are responsible for 70% of the processed milk consumed in the country. They also provide 25-30% of Paraguay’s meat exports, 20% of the cattle and close to 10% of its soybeans.

After MEDA ended its work in Paraguay, new organizations and businesses in the same spirit carried on. In 1996, MEDA Paraguay was formed as a separate organization. It initiated several domestic projects. These included the Codipsa starch factory; Dirssa, which works with charcoal; ProDir, which does loans; TobaSia, a brick factory that works with Indigenous people; and the Apissca honey/beekeeping initiative.

The church can be a help and sometimes a hindrance for people in business, Franz said. Given that governments, the church and business all target the same people with similar goals, “why should we not work together in synergy?” he asked.

“We have often, in the churches, complained about business and corruption, but we have forgotten that churches, without business, would almost not exist,” he said. “And the other way around, probably, too.”