A message to my fellow gringos…
Charissa Zehr, an MCC service worker in Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras, shares her thoughts on a book written over 20 years ago, and wonders if anything has changed for the rural people of Honduras since then. "...
Young adult exchange programs
Part of the Connecting Peoples program in Honduras is the sending and receiving of young adults as part of the SALT, YAMEN!, and IVEP programs.
These programs are great opportunities for cross-cultural learnin...
Migration Checkpoint
Miriam Harder has recently begun an MCC service assignment working in conservation agriculture in Chiapas, Mexico, and in Central America. In this blog, she recounts an encounter with the realities of immigrati...
Conflict of Reasonability – A Guatemalan Indigenous Community vs. an Italian Energy Corporation
Tobias Roberts, MCC service worker in Guatemala, describes the contrasting worldviews that have led to the breakdown in negotiations between a Mayan community and an Italian corporation building a dam, and expl...
Caravan of Central American Mothers search for missing Migrants in Mexico
The Casa de los Amigos, the Quaker house in Mexico City, is an MCC partner, and they recently hosted a very moving visit of Central American mothers searching for their children who have disappeared in Mexico w...
“Vivir Bien” – The Bolivian concept of “Abundant Life”
By Lynn Longenecker.
Lynn, his wife Laurie, and children, Maria, Nathan and Jesse, recently completed a three-year assignment in Bolivia. In this post, Lynn reflects on an indigenous concept that provides a cr...
Community Evolution – Not Community Development
Bruce, Ziko, Jaime, Hizee, and Zam Friesen-Pankratz, Photo by Luke Roth-Mullet
Bruce Friesen-Pankratz writes about his experience as an MCC service-worker in Zacango, Mexico, utilizing a biological metaphor t...
Prime Minister Harper and I mark the new Canada-Colombia Free-Trade Agreement
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and I were recently in Colombia. We visited youth programs in a marginalized urban neighbourhood, met with business leaders, and talked with Colombians about the new Canad...
Voices from the Americas: A Friend to Migrant Women caught in the Sex Trade
Gloria, a vivacious young woman in a tight top and short skirt, tells Maria and me that she would love to go for a day-trip to San Cristobal with us, but her “man” will not let her go. She laughs: “ He’s thinks...
New Border Wall in Nogales: Metal, Murals, & Music
Since last week, the old wall dividing the city of Nogales on the border between Arizona, USA and Sonora, Mexico is being replaced by a new one. The US government is tearing down 2.8 miles of old metal fence an...