YAMEN (Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network) and SALT (Serving And Learning Together) are 11-month-long immersive cross-cultural experiences for young Christians that build up the global church. Participants travel from their passport country to a new context where they live with a local host family, attend a local church, and volunteer at a local church or…
Tag: SALT
MCC U.S. Board Learning Tour 2023
In June 2023, the MCC U.S. Board of Directors spent eight days in Cambodia for a Learning Tour. There were 26 visitors in all, including Board members and MCC staff. We were quite a crowd when the MCC Cambodia team met up with them. On Sunday morning, the Learning Tour split up into two groups…
2023 YAMEN/IVEP Alumni Gathering
Every year (when there aren’t COVID-19 gathering restrictions) we host the Cambodian YAMEN and IVEP alumni at our home. This also includes the current SALT and YAMEN participants serving in Cambodia, as well as the outbound Cambodian IVEP/YAMEN participants who will be leaving in July. This isn’t just a social gathering – though it’s wonderful…
Visiting Isaac’s Host Family in Mesang
Last month during our team visit to Prey Veng province we visited Isaac, our SALT participant, who is living with a Khmer host family there and working at ODOV. Isaac is a recent graduate in Environmental Science from Eastern Mennonite University and is supporting ODOV as the Climate Resilience Assistant. Isaac’s host family in Mesang…
2022 YAMEN and SALT Class
A few days after Disha departed for India, we welcomed our new class of YAMEN and SALT participants. This year we have our largest class since prior to the pandemic, with six participants from Kenya, India, Zambia, Tanzania, and the United States. These young professionals will spend the next year living with Khmer host families…
2021 Traditional Khmer Photoshoot
It’s becoming a tradition for us to join the ‘GSL’ team for a photoshoot in traditional Khmer clothing. GSL stands for Global Service Learning; it’s the department that our YAMEN and SALT exchange program fits under. Simeon Ndagijimana (YAMEN participant from Rwanda), Clivia Avila (Connecting Peoples Coordinator from Honduras), and Andrew Neufeld (SALT participant from…
Thanksgiving 2020
We celebrated Thanksgiving on the Saturday after Black Friday this year. It was a small gathering of MCC Cambodia expatriates. This included our services workers – Rory, Marcia, and Clivia – as well as our SALTers – Isabelle and Andy. We also invited Max Ediger a long time MCC alumni now living in Phnom Penh…
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…
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Last Thursday I visited the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) with Annaliese. She’s a SALT participant working with long term MCC partner Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Cambodia Peace Gallery in Battambang. She scheduled the meeting with DC-Cam’s Information Technology Coordinator, Morm Sophat, to ask DC-Cam for recommendations on archival databases, how…
First Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Cambodia. We decided to wait and celebrate on Sunday so that the SALT participant in the province, Anneliese, could join. Despite spending most of Saturday at Visal’s Wedding Crystal still pulled together an authentic tasting Thanksgiving meal. We ended up with a full house – 16 people – for…