In June, MCC provided humanitarian relief funding to one of our local partners, Mission Dove, “to assist 160 economically depressed families that have lost income and employment in communities where DOVE has a presence by providing them with nutritional food packages so they can survive the aftermath of the recent COVID spike and lowdown.”

Mission Dove is a Christian NGO has a long history of hosting SALT and YAMEN participants but this project was the first time that they received formal funding from MCC and it was exciting to watch our Peace Coordinators walk alongside them through our grant process. Many Christian organizations are held back from grant opportunities because they only have experience with church funding – which normally has lower reporting and planning requirements but high relational requirements. This can be a problem when the relationship ends and the organization has no experience with non-church based funding. MCC operates between these two spheres as an International NGO and a Christian organization, so we can help bridge the two. So, who knows how God will work, but this may have been an important step for Mission Dove long term.

The overall aim of Mission Dove’s project is to provide short-term relief during the lockdown and aftermath to help disadvantaged families make it through the crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions, especially the recent lockdown, have dried up the incomes of many poor households in the areas where Mission Dove works. This project was designed to bring relief in the form food packages that provide nutrition to 160 households who are having difficulty finding income to buy any food during this time, help keep families healthy, and to help keep them from going deeper into debt. Mission Dove selected three locations: slums/depressed areas of Phnom Penh consisting of unskilled and uneducated people who sell fruit, work sanitation jobs, do motorcycle repair, Tuk Tuk/Pass App operators, small shop owners, and garment factor workers, a depressed farming community in Siem Reap and the struggling families of students.

Mission Dove has completed the first round of food distributions and is planning follow-up distributions in two months.

You might have noticed the yellow paper with the food relief. This was a complaints mechanism with a number the recipient could call if they felt they had been treated unfairly or had a concern. This call would go to another organization, Peace Bridges, who would then take the complaint and work to address it with Mission Dove.