This spring – amid unimaginable destruction in Gaza and as Palestinians mark the 76th anniversary of what is known in Arabic as the Nakba, or Catastrophe  – we invite you on a photographic journey through the history of MCC’s work in this region. See https://mcc.org/our-stories/marking-75-years-mcc-palestine-and-israel
 
Behind these images are countless lives and stories. May we hold this history and the 75 years of MCC’s service in our hearts as we continue to live into MCC’s mission of working for peace and justice. And may we ask how what we see and learn here can shape us to pray, to act, to give, to serve.
 
(Primary source: Alain Epp Weaver and Sonia K. Weaver, Salt and Sign: Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine 1949-1999)
 
MCC – Relief, development, and peace – in the name of Christ.

Jean Bosco Nsanzimana was used to getting food from the market — “even though I was a farmer,” he says.
Practices like intensive tilling had left his land, in the Kayonza District of Rwanda’s Eastern Province, depleted and unable to produce much food. And in this region of Rwanda — hotter and lower-lying than much of the country — changing weather patterns have brought additional challenges.
… Conservation agriculture training, provided through MCC partner Peace and Development Network (PDN), is helping these farmers, and others throughout Rwanda, find steadiness amid the uncertainty that climate change brings.
Now, when growing conditions are right, these farmers can grow enough to sustain their families, with extra to sell. Even when conditions are subpar, farmers who follow conservation agriculture practices get at least some crops.
https://mcc.org/our-stories/when-communities-grow-together
 
MCC – Relief, development, and peace – in the name of Christ.

Hena Khatun has a courtyard full of reasons to believe that she will be able to feed and care for her daughter and sickly husband, despite the floodwater from the nearby Jamuna River that threatens to cover the land where she lives.
 
Staff from MCC partner Maitree Palli Unnayan Sangathon (MPUS) taught her to look up. The local NGO showed her techniques they’d learned from MCC’s agricultural team in Bangladesh.
 
Now Khatun has eggplant, chiles and cabbage growing in sacks that sit on the ascending shelves of an 8-foot-tall, triangular bamboo structure, called a 3D garden. More eggplant grows in hanging bags, which are out of reach of rising water and can be moved if necessary. Bottle gourds, a favorite ingredient in Bengali cooking, grow on vines that spread across a bamboo canopy. Read more about this project at https://mcc.org/our-stories/above-floodwaters
 
MCC – Relief, development, and peace – in the name of Christ.