Peacebuilding in Orissa

The first photo is of me and the Orissa Minister of School and Mass Education flagging off the peace march. The second is of the march being led by a police officer, the third is of street children from the SNEH shelter-home performing a peacebuilding drama. The last is of a university student performing a traditional dance.


The Society for Nature, Education, and Health (SNEH), an MCC partner organization, inaugurated their Centre for Peace and Non-violence on World Peace Day, August 21, 2009. Thomas Harris, an MCC India project officer, and I took the overnight train to Bhubaneswar, Orissa to represent MCC at this significant milestone in our peacebuilding programming in Orissa.

Along with their other rural development and health programs, SNEH has been providing peacebuilding and conflict mediation skills to students in several high schools in Bhubaneswar. They also have a shelter-home and study center for street children in Saliasahi, a huge slum in Bhubaneswar. The newly inaugurated Centre for Peace and Non-violence is their response to the recent interfaith violence between Christians and Hindus in Orissa.

The World Peace Day inaugural program began with a three-kilometer peace march, guided by Gandhians, which included more than 300 students from various universities in the city. The peace march was followed by the inauguration ceremony at the newly constructed SNEH office building that will also house the Centre for Peace and Nonviolence.

Various local politicians and academic leaders spoke at the event which was covered by local television and newspapers. I gave a brief address on behalf of MCC India. The children from the SNEH shelter-home performed a drama on interfaith conflict that was resolved through dialogue and organizing a community peace committee. This was followed by a cultural dance and a linguistic drama, representing diversity and unity in India, performed by university students.

The Centre for Peace and Non-violence will be a place for study and research as well as peacebuilding activities and non-violent community action. A network of civil society organizations working for communal harmony is being formed. Upcoming activities in Kandhamal District, where interfaith violence erupted last year, include two conflict mediation trainings, a peace rally, and a peacebuilding competition for students.

Country Evaluations

The first photo is of students at the School of Shanti in Nepal, the second is of a tailor in Kathmandu, the third is of Charlotte and Micah in Itahari,and the fourth is of evaluators talking with vocational education alumni in Kolkata.






























During much of the past month, Ruth and I have been busy with country evaluations in India and Nepal. The actual evaluation began when the team of four evaluators arrived at our MCC India office. The preliminary work had begun several months earlier as we and our staff assembled relevant documents, chose people to be interviewed, made travel arrangements, and developed key questions about the region and the work of MCC.

The goals were to both access our efforts during the past five years and to help set our strategic direction. I traveled in India with two members of the evaluation team that visited Mennonite Brethren churches and programs as well as the Henry Martyn Institute (HMI), a long-standing peacebuilding partner in South India. Dan Shetler, an MCC service worker at HMI, joined us in these conversations. The other two evaluation team members visited community development and education partners.

There was lots of affirmation for the work of MCC in India through the years. The evaluation team encouraged us to stay creative and proactive in out work. Such observations were framed as the challenge of moving from “good” to “better.” There is a sense that change is in the air as MCC repositions itself as a relief, development, and peacebuilding ministry of the global Anabaptist family of churches. We seek to envision what such change may include in our region as well as the new opportunities it may offer.

There were many encouraging conversations. One was when the HMI staff encouraged MCC to embrace our Mennonite heritage because this is our unique contribution to the field of peacebuilding. Another was a conversation with about twenty young adult alumni of our Global Family vocational education scholarship program in Kolkata. Each had a personal story of struggle to finance their education and eventually being able to help support their families as they completed their schooling and got jobs. I was especially impressed by the way our Global Family staff had built warm, nurturing relationships with these students.

We then traveled to Nepal with two members of the evaluation team to engage in a similar but smaller scale process there. Ruth and I also took this opportunity to visit various project partners and service workers in Nepal. We traveled to Itahari, a hot little town near the Indian border, to visit Charlotte and Micah Shristi who have recently begun their assignments there with United Mission to Nepal (UMN).

Charlotte is a peacebuilding advisor and Micah is an appropriate technology advisor for their UMN project cluster. We were impressed by how quickly they had made Itahari their home and were already involved in some exciting projects including cross-border violence and building a solar drier.

MCC is in the process of being registered as an international relief and development agency in Nepal. Amos and Heidi Stoltzfus, MCC service workers in Kathmandu, Nepal briefed us on these developments and other matters related to our work there.

We slipped in a quick visit to the School of Shanti, an innovative peace-training program, on the morning before we returned to Kolkata. Sixteen staff members of various grass-roots organizations from all over Nepal were gathered for a two-week training before beginning a two-month practicum with their organization. This training-practicum cycle is repeated three times throughout the one-year course. The interactive energy in the room as they engaged the topic of identity and violence was very encouraging.