Without access to sanitary products, girls can miss up to a week of school each month. But this is changing for students at Mukuru Mennonite Academy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Cité Soleil, a community in Port-au-Prince, is stigmatized by others in Haiti and the rest of the world as an area of extreme violence and competing gangs. MCC partner SAKALA (Sant Kominote Altènatif Ak Lapè, The Community Center for Peaceful Alternatives) has developed a peace education tool that the youth are thrilled about-soccer. "The way that we started the sports was to channel the energy of the youth in this neighborhood towards something more positive, instead of them getting so angry about what they see in their daily life," says SAKALA co-founder Daniel Tillas. For the youth growing up in Cité Soleil the options are often either stay inside to stay safe or leave the community. SAKALA was created as an alternative. A place where youth can go to feel safe and be in community. In 2018, MCC celebrates 60 years of work with our Haitian partners.

Girls face quite a few barriers to education in Bangladesh including, sexual harassment on their way to and from school. In recent times, the alarming number of suicides committed by young girls shook the nation. This brought the safety and security of girls attending school into question. MCC Bangladesh, for many years, has partnered with Catholic Sisters. Parents living in remote areas, often Indigenous families, are eager to admit their girls into boarding schools because of the safe environment for education. However, often they are not able to pay full boarding fees and education expenses. MCC grants funds to the sisters to ensure girls are able to access education.

Joyce Ngumbao welcome’s you to her table to learn about cooking Kitheri and how her relationship with MCC partner Utooni Development Organization (UDO) had aided her in finding a sustainable solution to food security. Climate change is creating unreliable rainfall, rising temperatures and drought. UDO is aiming to mitigate the effects of climate change for small-scale farmers using three main principles: minimal soil disturbance, soil cover, and crop rotation - conservation agriculture.

Nsimire Mugoli, her husband, Chubaka Birhonoka, and their nine children left everything behind to flee to safety. They now live in thatch huts in Mubimbi, a camp for 300 families displaced people by the violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Over the years, with funding through MCC’s account at Canadian Foodgrains Bank the projects of MCC and its partner Église du Christ au Congo — Ministère des Refugiés et des Urgences (ECC-MERU or Church of Christ in Congo — Ministry of Refugees and Emergencies) have provided a safety net for families at Mubimbi.

Created for an educational course run by Clean Water Education Partnership.