The Project for Refugee People in Ecuador ended its work April 30 after decades of supporting refugees fleeing violence in neighboring Colombia.

Based out of Iglesia Cristiana Menonita de Quito (Quito Mennonite Church), the project was supported by a partnership including Mennonite Church of Colombia, Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Mission Network and Central Plains Conference of Mennonite Church USA.

The congregation was founded in 2001 in Quito by Colombian mission workers with support from those organizations. The church was soon called to accompany refugees fleeing conflict in Colombia, and the project became an intrinsic part of church life. Refugees became a big part of the church, and at times many of its members have been refugees and migrants, especially from Venezuela.

The project offered orientation, food, psychological support, entrepreneurship assistance, school supplies and uniforms, eco-friendly diapers and other resources to start a new life. Workshops on peace were offered monthly to refugees, in addition to vulnerable Ecuadorian people, with the goal of building peace through education.

MCC provided most of the economic support, with Ecuadorian families and churches donating clothes and other supplies. MCC confirmed it had decided to discontinue the project when the current three-year project cycle ends in March 2027.

“We can’t speak to any other decisions that were made,” said Jack Lesniewski, an MCC area director who oversees several South American countries. “MCC regularly starts and ends projects with our partners. In this case, MCC’s decision came after programmatic shifts in the region.

“This decision in no way diminishes the value of the work that occurred over the years. We are grateful for our longtime partnership with Quito ­Mennonite Church, and we celebrate the incredible impact this work has had within migrant and refugee communities.”

The abrupt closure follows conflict that simmered for at least a year between the program’s staff and the board of directors of Iglesia Cristiana Anabautista Menonita de Ecuador (ICAME, Anabaptist Mennonite Christian Church of Ecuador).

ICAME board president Margarita de la Torre and the rest of the board clarified in a June 10 letter to supporting organizations that ICAME terminated the project’s three staff on April 30 — in part over disagreements regarding compensation that involved the Ministry of Labor, leading to the project closing a year before funding would end.

“We fully share the concern for the beneficiaries and for the well-being of the people accompanied by the project,” the board wrote. “However, we believe it is necessary to return those same questions to the workers, inviting them to answer them with sincerity, responsibility and transparency.”

The project’s former coordinator, Alexandra Meneses, said the organization helped about 1,800 Ecuadorians, Colombians and Venezuelans last year. She lamented that the project left work unfinished.

“I think one of the biggest tensions they’ve had is that MCC stopped discussing various aspects of the project directly with the workers,” she said.

“. . . We never expected that the agreement proposed by the board and MCC would be the immediate termination of our employment contracts, again without dialogue with the workers, without reaching mutual agreements and without bringing this important decision before [ICAME’s] Assembly of Members. . . . We believe that MCC, based on its philosophy and identity, should have encouraged a different decision-making process — a dynamic of shared, nonhierarchical power.”

The ICAME board stated it disagrees with former workers’ characterization of events.

MMN provided support by appointing mission workers to serve at the church. The current workers are Delicia Bravo Aguilar and Peter Wigginton.

“Mennonite Mission Network has been a longtime partner of the Quito Mennonite Church and has provided support for the Quito Refugee program,” said Juan Sebastian Pacheco Lozano, MMN regional director for Latin America. “We will continue to accompany and support the national conference, ICAME and the local ­Quito Mennonite Church as they continue discerning the next steps.”

“We are saddened to hear that the refugee project and the after school program in Jardines del Inca have stopped their transformative work,” said MMN Ecuador partnership coordinators Delicia Bravo Aguilar and Peter Wigginton, “especially since both projects were such a blessing to the community here in Quito and to so many refugees that have gone through this church and gone to spread that blessing to other parts of Quito, Ecuador and around the world over so many years.”