Over the last month we’ve been welcoming our new class of YAMEN participants from around the world. These young adults will be living in Cambodian host families and serving at local organizations for 11 months. The participants this year come from Malawi, South Korea, Kenya, and India. Two of the participants will be living in…
Tag: MCC
PSEA, Jean Vanier & John Howard Yoder
As Crystal shared, earlier this year we were in a series of MCC Asia leadership virtual workshops on PSEA (Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse) that stretched over several weeks. I was asked to prepare a devotional for one of the workshops and I decided to read a passage from Jean Vanier’s book The Broken…
ធម្មយាត្រា | Dhammayietra
In traditional Cambodian village life the local Buddhist Monks served as educators, healthcare providers, and – along with the village elders and chief – meditators of local conflict. When the Khmer Rouge fully took power in 1975 they forbid all religious practice. By the time the Khmer Rouge were driven out of power only around…
What do we mean by Peace?
Mennonite Central Committee is a global, nonprofit organization that strives to share God’s love and compassion for all through relief, development and peace. One question that we get a lot is… What do we mean by Peace? By peace, we do not mean the simple absence of armed conflict or even reaching surface level harmony….
Pray for Afghanistan
As you pray for Afghanistan, please include a prayer for MCC Afghanistan and our local partners there. For security reasons I can’t share details but it is a time of immense fear, sorrow, and lamentation. Please also take a moment to remember Glen Lapp, a MCC service worker who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010….
Christopher Dock and Peaceful Education
Our rural primary school education program is making the shift to focus on peaceful education and that’s had me thinking about Christopher Dock. No, no, not Crystal’s high school but the educator for whom it is named. Christopher Dock was a Mennonite educator who taught in the Skippack area from 1718 to 1771 (with a…
PSEA in MCC Cambodia
PSEA is the acronym used for the Prevention against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. About a decade ago, the world began to discover that sexual exploitation and abuse were possible, and even at times rampant, in the humanitarian world. Scandals in large international NGOs were made public and the international development and humanitarian sectors began to pay…
Voltra Matrix Test Drive
Last week Doungchann, our administrative assistant, and I went to test drive the Voltra Matrix. This is the first ‘made in Cambodia’ electric moto. If you’ve been to Phnom Penh, you know that the air and noise pollution are major problems. Cambodia is also consistently ranked as one of the top ten countries in the…
COVID-19: Full Lockdown
By many metrics, Cambodia is still doing well during the pandemic but the situation is much worse than it was just two months ago. On Friday, we saw our highest increase of cases with almost 700 people diagnosed followed by almost 500 people on Saturday and another 300 people yesterday. These are not high numbers…
Summer 2020 General Update
I wanted to give you all a quick update before getting into more specific details. YAMEN Departures: In my last post I shared that Moudy, our volunteer from Indonesia, made it home safely. Last week Jonathan and Victor, our volunteers from Kenya, made it home safely. There were a lot of COVID-19 challenges to navigate…