Subseries 03.03 - Europe & Africa Project MCC Correspondence

In World War I American conscientious objectors were drafted into military service with the expectation that they would perform work with the military as noncombatants. Many of these draftees refused to participate or wear a military uniform. In 1940 the U.S. congress passed legislation titled United States Selective Service and Training Act Civilian Public Service which allowed conscientious objector draftees to serve doing “work of national importance.”
In the six and one-half years that men were drafted under this law, nearly 12,600 men were assigned to Civilian Public Service camps. Of these, 4,665 or 38 per cent were Mennonites. Following the Mennonites in number of men in the camps were the Church of the Brethren, Friends, and the Methodists, who ranked second, third, and fourth respectively.
Mennonite Central Committee worked with the National Service Board for Religious Objectors in cooperation with Mennonites and other anabaptist groups in the United States to administer the Civilian Public Service Program.

Alternative Service Work Camps were the Canadian response for conscientious objectors during World War II.

In 1920, civil war, famine and disease swept through Ukraine (then known as South Russia) in the chaos that followed the Russian Revolution. Mennonites in Ukraine, who numbered about 75,000, made a plea for aid to their brothers and sisters in faith in Western Europe, the United States and Canada. They sent four men (Benjamin H. Unruh, A. A. Friesen, K. H. Warkentin, and John Esau) to Mennonite communities in the United States to ask for help.
On July 27-28, 1920, representatives from several Mennonite Relief Commissions met at Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Ind., to decide on a course of action. The result was a provisional organization, to be called Mennonite Central Committee, whose purpose was to unite all Mennonite relief organizations and church conferences in the United States and Canada that were interested in responding to the needs in Ukraine. This Central Committee held its first official meeting September 27, 1920, in Chicago, Ill.
Among its first actions, MCC decided to send three men to Ukraine to investigate and begin relief work. They were Orie O. Miller, of Akron, Pa., who would lead the group; Arthur Slagel, of Flanagan, Ill.; and Clayton Kratz, of Perkasie, Pa. After 25 days, they reached Constantinople, a gateway to Ukraine. Slagel stayed in Constantinople, and Kratz and Miller went on to visit devastated Mennonite villages in Ukraine and meet with Mennonite leaders and relief workers. Miller soon returned to Constantinople for supplies, but Kratz stayed to work. Shortly afterward, the civil war was won by the Communists, as the Red Army defeated the White Army and took control of Ukraine. Kratz disappeared and is believed to have been killed at the end of a war that claimed more than 9 million lives. Today, MCC remembers Clayton Kratz as the first MCC worker to give his life in service to others.
From the fall of 1920 to the summer of 1922, MCC operated shelters for Mennonites and other refugees in Constantinople. After repeated attempts to gain access to Ukraine to deliver humanitarian aid, MCC was able to set up feeding kitchens in Mennonite areas in the spring of 1922. While these kitchens served many Mennonites, they served non-Mennonites as well. Those who received food and other aid were chosen on the basis of need. From 1922 to 1923, MCC provided survival rations to 75,000 people, 60,000 of whom were Mennonites. MCC also provided 50 tractors and 200 horses for Ukrainian Mennonite farmers.
In the mid-1920s, MCC concluded its work in Ukraine as the famine subsided. By the end of its relief efforts, MCC had received and used nearly $1.3 million in funds, clothing and food from Mennonites in the United States and Canada. There were still needs, however, and during the 1930s, MCC helped about 2,000 Ukrainian Mennonite refugees resettle in Paraguay. As part of this effort, MCC was legally incorporated in 1937 in Akron, Pa., where its U.S. national office is still located today.
Since World War II, MCC has worked with refugees from conflicts all over the world and has branched out into many other areas of service that reflect Anabaptist faith. Among these was the Teachers Abroad Program (TAP) in which more than 650 teachers served in a dozen Sub-Saharan African countries from 1962 through the mid-1980s.
In 1963, MCC was incorporated in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as MCC Canada. Today, management of the international work is shared by MCC Canada and MCC U.S. MCC also has eight provincial offices in Canada, of which five are separately incorporated and three are nationally operated, plus four separately incorporated regional offices in the U.S. In addition, there are advocacy offices in New York, Ottawa and Washington, DC. Each year, thousands of supporters of MCC raise more than $35 million to support its international and domestic work, volunteering and shopping at 102 MCC thrift shops, organizing and attending 42 MCC relief sales and making financial and material contributions. Among other efforts, supporters assemble hygiene, infant care, relief, and school kits; donate basic supplies and can hundreds of thousands of pounds of meat for people struggling with war, poverty or natural disasters. These items, which MCC ships from the United States and Canada, total more than $4 million in value each year.

Beginning in 2008, MCC began a process of consultation and discussion concerning the purpose and structure of MCC Binational, MCC Canada, and MCC U.S. called New Wine/New Wineskins. This process was begun with the goal of MCC international programming becoming more effectively and efficiently administered. At the conclusion of the New Wine/New Wineskin process in 2012, MCC Binational was dissolved and ceased to be an MCC entity, which left both MCC Canada and MCC U.S. in the position to act jointly in administering a single MCC International Program that had previously been ultimately administered by MCC Binational.
MCC U.S. continues its commitment to providing national programs within the United States as well as international programs jointly with MCC Canada. National programs such as the Anti-Oppression program, the Immigration Education program, the Peace Education program, and the Restorative Justice program continue to be at the core of MCC U.S.’s activities along with operating an office in Washington D.C. to address national legislative matters important to constituents. MCC U.S. also continues to jointly administer the MCC Shared International Program with MCC Canada and encourages inter-Mennonite cooperation between Mennonite agencies on local and national levels throughout the United States and the world.

All monetary figures are in U.S. dollars and have not been adjusted for inflation.
Current numbers are based on 2016 figures, if available: of 2015 figures, if not.
Tim Shenk, A Brief History of MCC, January 2007. Frank Peachey, revision and update, September 2016
Minutes of the first meeting of the Mennonite Central Committee, pg. 53, Orie O Miller and P.C. Hiebert, Feeding the Hungry, Russia Famine 1919-1925
Minutes of MCC Executive Committee, January 25, 1930
Gameo. Corporación Paraguaya.