Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the 54th annual Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale, scheduled for Oct. 2-3, is determined to go on. Last fall’s sale raised nearly $400,000 for Mennonite Central Committee.
Refugees and other displaced people living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria already were struggling to subsist before COVID-19 became a health and economic threat.
NAIROBI, Kenya — Mathare settlement isn’t an easy place to stay clean and healthy on an ordinary day, so preventing COVID-19 from infecting people in a crowded slum of Nairobi is a challenge.
Each year, relief sales raise more than $4.5 million for Mennonite Central Committee’s work around the world. They are made possible by the work of hundreds of volunteers. Some, like Jerry Toews of Goessel, Kan., end up donating not just a few hours but days or weeks of time a year to make these efforts a success.
Leadership of Mennonite Central Committee U.S. will transition in October as J Ron Byler retires as executive director and current associate executive director Ann Graber Hershberger moves into the role.
NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — COVID-19 stopped the Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale’s main event, but it couldn’t stop people from coming together to support Mennonite Central Committee. They’ve already raised almost as much as last year.
Bruno Götzke, a Mennonite pastor and refugee from East Prussia, sensed early in 1953 the police were taking too much interest in his efforts to establish roughly a dozen new centers of worship for Mennonites in East Germany.
As climate change takes its toll on Zimbabwe, millions who rely on agriculture are threatened with food scarcity. But Edfil Moyo, a subsistence farmer in Gwanda District, has been able to adapt.