Photo: Recipients of MEDA’s “10 Young Women Changing the World” award speak during an Oct. 28 panel session. From left: Mary Fehr, Melisa Baez, Carissa Rempel, Kelly Shenk Koontz, Salima Jaffer (standing), and Audra Miller. The Mennonite, Inc. photo. 

The contributions of women to economic development and world-changing work were front and center at the 2016 MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) Convention Oct. 27-30 in San Antonio, Texas. Around 425 attendees, mostly from the United States and Canada, gathered at the annual event to learn about and support MEDA’s ongoing work around the world.

Plenary sessions

Each day was organized around plenary sessions featuring powerful women speaking about their worldwide work. On Oct. 27, Sally Armstrong, an international war correspondent who has specialized in coverage of women during wartime and winner of three Amnesty International awards, addressed the group.

Armstrong emphasized the important contribution of women to the global economy and to global peacemaking efforts.

“Economic growth is driven by women,” said Armstrong. “Emancipation is the antidote to poverty.”

Armstrong shared stories from her coverage of atrocities in Afghanistan, Kenya and Sarajevo, as well as her experiences of seeing girls and women rise up to demand humane treatment and protest war crimes.

Armstrong was inspired to report on the experiences of women while covering the war in Sarajevo in

1992. While onsite, Armstrong became aware of reports of gang-rape camps being set up throughout the country. Because she worked for a magazine that was unable to get breaking news out quickly, she shared her story with an editor in Toronto who sat on the story and didn’t publish it. Slowly, Armstrong realized that mainstream news sources weren’t interested in covering stories primarily focused on women. Her magazine subsequently covered the story, raising protest around the world about the camps and earning her an Amnesty International award.

“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it,” she said. “The nature of goodness bears much resemblance to intervention, and change happens because people engage in a process.…Our voice is the most powerful tool we have.”

On Oct. 28, a panel of women in business, including Olivia Holden, executive director of ASSETS Toledo, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping people with the skills to go into business; Michelle Horning, professor of accounting and chair of the Business Department at Goshen (Indiana) College; Laura Stephenson, co-founder of 4D CONCEPTS, Inc., an importer/wholesaler that specializes in selling to e-commerce companies in Rancho Cucamonga, California; and Crystal Weaver, owner of Prince St. Café and Passenger Coffee Roasting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Panel members shared tips they had learned from their work, as well as reflections on how faith and business concepts are integrated for them.

“When I was young, my father told me, ‘Olivia, you don’t have to sit in the back of the bus. You can ride in the front. And more importantly, you can own the whole bus company,’” said Holden. “I wanted to help others achieve that.”

On Oct. 29, Nobel Prize winner and worldwide activist and speaker Leymah Gbowee spoke about her

experience of mobilizing women in Liberia and beyond. Gbowee is also a graduate of Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

When people ask her how the women’s movement for peace and to end war in Liberia was successful, she says, “Before we started the quest for peace, we had to heal ourselves. You cannot give what you don’t have.”

Gbowee talked about the need for women in the Liberian movement to come to terms with the devastation of war and the cost of holding their communities and families together in the midst of despair or “soaking up the dirt and filth of war.”

She encouraged MEDA attendees to devote their lives to tearing down the invisible barriers that prevent peace from being a true possibility.

“Why is it that even though we stand for the same things, we find it so hard to work together?” said Gbowee. “Does the bullet know a Christian from a Muslim? When a mother loses a child, is the pain of a Christian different [from] a Muslim’s?”

She noted that including women in any process for peace is critical and that no work can happen without thinking about the ways people are connected as global citizens.

“Leaving women out of development work is like covering one eye and trying to see the whole picture,” said Gbowee.

She also challenged people to get active in peacebuilding work.

“It is time for each and every one of us to get mad enough to do something uncomfortable,” she said. “And to all the women and young girls, do one good thing every day that everyone else is scared to do….Every day, I try to find one little thing that keeps me hopeful.”

On Oct. 30, Sara Wenger Shenk, president of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana,

spoke on the theme “Like a Hen, Gathering the Brood.” Wenger Shenk reflected on the biblicalimage of a hen used by Jesus in Matthew 23: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Wenger Shenk used this maternal image as an example of leadership that empowers individuals to take risks and speak difficult truths in empathetic and just ways.

Singing and worship was led by Ruth Moreland, founding director of Bennissimo Music Productons and an active composer and music arranger in San Antonio.

Video: Ruth Moreland leads MEDA attendees in singing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” at Mission Concepcion

10 young women changing the world

MEDA also honored “10 young women changing the world.” Award recipients were honored during the Oct. 27 plenary session. Recipients included Ishita Aggarwal, Melisa Baez, Leena Miller Cressman, Janae Dagen, Mary Fehr, Kate Stoltzfus, Carissa Rempel, Audra Miller, Kelly Shenk Koontz and Salima Jaffer.

The recipients also spoke on a panel during an Oct. 28 seminar session, where they talked about the work they have been engaged in as well as encouraged participants to keep working to better the world, piece by piece.

“It’s easy to be overwhelmed by al the negatives in the world,” said Carissa Rempel, who has started a youth drop-in center and a healing art center in Arborg, Manitoba. “We all have the potential to do something. Every little bit of good, piled together, can overwhelm the world.”

The business of MEDA

During the Oct. 28 business meeting, MEDA President Allen Sauder announced that MEDA had a strong financial year, receiving a record $6.3 million in individual contributions. MEDA works with 246 organizations around the world to impact an estimated 46 million families in 62 countries. The organization reported a $660,000 operating surplus for FYE 2016.

During the convention, MEDA also hosted a live auction to raise funds for its newest project, Myanmar on the Move. This project is focused on improving economic opportunities for 25,000 women in Myanmar by providing “training for trainers” and helping connect women producers to new local and international markets.

The live auction, which featuring items like a trip to a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game, a hand-pieced quilt and a wall-hanging created in Jordan, raised $103,600.

The 2017 MEDA Convention will be held Nov. 2-5 in Vancouver, British Colombia.

Singing Ukuthula at MEDA 2016:

https://soundcloud.com/themennonite/meda-2016-ukuthula