I am privileged and honored to introduce the Executive Director of the Mennonite Central Committee, Dr. Ann Graber Hershberger. The Mennonite Central Committee, referred to as MCC, is a global nonprofit organization, focused on providing relief, development and peace in over 50 countries worldwide. And this year – 2020 – MCC celebrates its 100th anniversary. You’ll love how honestly and vulnerably Ann talks about MCC’s brilliant achievements, but also some of the costly blunders along the way.
Peace and Justice for All
You can listen to the full conversation by clicking ‘play’ above, or on the following podcast platforms:
The following is a taste of my conversation with Ann.
Q: From an outsider’s perspective, MCC appears to be a fairly typical NGO. What makes it unique as a Mennonite organization?
Ann: I would say that a learning posture would be one of its most unique aspects.
Q: Would you describe for our listeners the underlying interdependency of economic development and peace-building?
Ann: Well, you can bring new ideas, or things and money into a community, but if you don’t address the basic conflicts within a community, whether that be inter-religious, whether that be related to gender, whether that be related to class or ethnic background, you can exacerbate those conflicts.
Q: By what process has MCC confronted its own cultural patterns that may get in the way of its mission?
Ann: It is a continual process and more than one process that has to be renewed with each age generation and, in some, cases each year. Right now, I sense an openness within MCC and within supporters for change that I have not experienced for a long time.
Q: How do you balance the need to pacify skeptics who object to a charity using their donations to cover overhead with a very, very real need to invest in your organization’s survival and growth?
Ann: There is always a push to grow. And so, it’s a constant monitoring – what needs to be done here, what needs to be sent there? What does the field need? We have to constantly question ourselves, is this needed or is this just about wanting to grow?
When asked if she had one last thing she’d like our listeners to hear, Ann said, “In the end, we live our individual lives, but we live them out in a community. And everybody that I meet anywhere has a story. Whether I feel attracted to hearing that person or whether I feel like I’m not sure that I want to go there, everybody has a story that I can learn from. And I would just say, you know, hear the stories.”
About Dr. Ann Graber Hershberger:
Ann Graber Hershberger has worked in family health, community health, international health, and nursing education since 1976. Ann and her husband Jim, pastor and former director of Church World Service Harrisonburg Refugee Resettlement Program, have spent ten years in church sponsored service in Central America. She earned her PhD from the University of Virginia; completing a dissertation entitled, “A case study of relationships between Nicaraguan non-governmental health organizations, communities served, donor agencies, and the Ministry of Health.” In addition to a long career on the faculty of Eastern Mennonite University, Ann has been a consultant for a nursing school in Nicaragua, and has served on various boards of non-profit organizations. She is currently MCC’s Executive Director.
MCC, is a global nonprofit organization, focused on providing relief, development and peace in over 50 countries worldwide. And this year – 2020 – MCC celebrates its 100th anniversary.
Find Ann Online:
https://emu.edu/faculty-staff/?show=hershbea (Website)
Interview Transcription:
Marlena: And welcome. It’s wonderful to have you on the show.
Ann: Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Marlena: Let’s begin at the beginning. Would you briefly describe how MCC got started 100 years ago and what its primary mission was at the time?
Ann: This has been a, not the centennial year of a celebration we thought it would be. We were hoping to have many different places and times to retell that first story, but it has been done some online. So, there was a message, well first, letters and then a visit by four people from Mennonite communities in present-day Ukraine, then it was called Russia. And because of the revolution there, there was great suffering. There was great suffering and they wrote, “We are starving.” So, it was a response to a request which is an approach that’s persisted in MCC through these 100 years. Probably in typical a variety of Mennonites style, there are several stories about what actually was the beginning of MCC. So, there are folks in Canada that think that the first meetings happened there, there are folks in Kansas that think the first meetings happened there, there are folks in Indiana that say the first meetings happened there, but they were all, kind of, working together.
Marlena: Well, my family came from Kansas. So it must have been Kansas.
Ann: Oh, it must’ve been there on that porch I believe near Tabor College.
Marlena: Yeah, it’s right.
Ann: So, the trick was that they needed to work together across different groupings of Mennonites, and there was some mistrust because well, we don’t believe quite like you believe so… But the need was so great. They said, “We needed to do this.” So, they did respond. And first went with the food, bread in particular, for a while. In those first months, they were feeding 25,000 people a day and then grew beyond that.
Marlena: So, MCC’s focus is on relief, development, and peace. And we’ll talk about each of these in some detail in a moment, but first, can you comment on why these three versus any number of other possible initiatives?
Ann: I would suggest that those three respond to the broadest way to look at need. So, if you think about the word relief, that’s an old, old word that’s still used. It’s that human impulse to offer the cup of water, to offer the loaf of bread, to offer the clothes, clothing that somebody might need. It’s the emergency and something has all been stripped away by war, or famine, or whatever. But it’s not enough. So, within two years, no, actually within one year, I believe it was in Russia, we sent tractors because the horses had died or perhaps were consumed and they needed help to plant and to harvest. So, that was the beginning of the development. And it’s the old idea of helping people help themselves, giving them the tools they need.
Marlena: Yes.
Ann: Moving to that. And peace comes out of our faith tradition. So, it’s how you do. It’s so like what you do, why you do, how you do, and that has stayed. That has stayed.
Marlena: I read in an annual report that in 2019, MCC supported 648 projects in 53 countries around the world and worked with 453 different partner organizations spending nearly $16 million on relief, somewhere near $40 million on development, and I think $13 million on peacebuilding. From an outsider’s perspective, this appears to be a fairly typical NGO. What is distinctly Mennonite about the organization? What makes it unique as a Mennonite organization?
Ann: I would say that a learning posture would be one of the most unique. A grassroots approach for many years, many decades, MCC years, and MCC projects were those where service workers were embedded in a community. That was my own first experience in Nicaragua. I was a volunteer nurse living in a community, working with that community to train lay health promoters, and provide care in that way, but through people in the community. There’s a humility that has been long been valued in the Anabaptist Mennonite community, listening to, not bringing the solution so much, but partnering with. Now in vogue, you know, in NGOs, large, large NGOs to talk about localization as if it’s a new, kind of, approach and it isn’t new. I think that that’s one major thread. The second would be that peacebuilding is woven into all that we do.
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: So, when we’d set up an emergency aid distribution, we’re looking at how do we set this up that will decrease conflict between groups?
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: How do we set this up this development project that will include women and empower women? How do we, you know, set up an education project that will increase peacebuilding among students of different ethnic backgrounds or religious backgrounds?
Marlena: Yeah. In fact, the Mennonite faith explicitly affirms pacifism as central to Christianity. In the words of one of your partners, and I quote here, “Most everything that we do is focused on the greater goal of peacebuilding. Relief and development are done in the context of peacebuilding.” Would you describe for our listeners as you see it the underlying interdependency of economic development and peacebuilding?
Ann: Well, you can bring, or bring new ideas, or you can bring things and money into a community, but if you don’t address the basic or work with the community, let the community address their own conflicts, whether that be inter-religious, whether that be related to gender, whether that be related to class or ethnic background, you can exacerbate those conflicts.
Marlena: Yeah,
Ann: So, if you don’t have the lens of conflict, which is people often don’t think about, thinking about conflict when you’re thinking about peace, as a way to create peace, but you have to expose, and understand, and explore, and talk about conflict before you can get to peace.
Marlena: That is so what your representative in Zimbabwe, Gopar Tapkida, who is another guest on this podcast. And he said it just as you just have. Without peace, development initiatives don’t survive. And for him, it was just that simple.
Ann: Right. Right.
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah. What some of our listeners may not know is that there’s no unified Mennonite peace theology. So, there are very different views on what it means to renounce violence. Given that MCC doesn’t have any singular statement on what peace means, how does pacifism express itself in MCC’s peace initiatives?
Ann: Probably, the way we agree across the varied expressions of Anabaptism or Mennonitism and pacifism is that we all agree that we are called to carry out the work of Christ and our vision, mission statement says that we envision communities worldwide in right relationship with God, one another, and creation. And that’s one sentence out of a two-sentence mission vision statement. And so, we’re always thinking about, “How does this increase relationship with each other, with creation, and with God?”
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: And remember it’s community. So, it’s not just individuals. It’s communities. So, that we agree on across the many groups that support MCC. We don’t necessarily agree on how much we are involved with government in terms of advocacy, we may not agree on exactly, you know, even whether we should use an armed guard at an office somewhere in the world, but we can agree that we work toward this because we envision communities in right relationship with each other.
Marlena: Yes. So, let’s talk a bit about your relief humanitarian initiatives. Since its inception in 1920, MCC has collected and shipped somewhere around 1.5 million tons of humanitarian resources to over 100 different countries, stuff like clothing, food, medical equipment, medicines, blankets, school kits. And I just wanna inject a little personal note here. When I was a kid, daughter of MCC missionaries in Paraguay, we received MCC Christmas bundles every year, and they had toys and hygiene supplies. And we distributed these to our leprosy patients and the workers on our leprosy station. And it was the most joyous event of Christmas as I remember it. And I described this at length in my new book, “Nothing Bad Between Us.” I understand that the nature of relief and humanitarian aid has shifted over the years. And I think you no longer even send out those amazing Christmas bundles. My question to you is this. How has this changed and why?
Ann: Well, Marlena, first, let me say that when I grew up… We won’t talk about dates here so, I’m not sure we’re in the same dates, but I looked forward every July to making those kits. It was a big deal. At our home church, my mother was very involved with creating those. And I remember the little sheets that said what you should put in each one, and we would go and purchase things or sometimes she would make things.
Marlena: I have goosebumps right now,
Ann: So, [inaudible 00:12:58] we were on both sides of that.
Marlena: Oh, what a great linkage. I love it.
Ann: Yeah.
Marlena: Love it.
Ann: And we just had a session in the Akron office about, I think, in January and looking back at those kits and sort of being amused the things we wouldn’t necessarily do now, but realizing it came out of a heart of giving and trying to address a need. Yes, things have changed, but that said, it seems that… Let me take, for example, the comforters that are still made, thousands of comforters. We shipped, I think, 65,000 last year. One can buy blankets locally. It costs money to send them, but there is a demand for something that somebody has touched and made for you that shows somebody cares, the idea of comfort. So, we want to balance that personal connection, personal touch with the understanding that both in terms of creation care, shipping things is not a great idea, is not necessarily the best idea, plus local economies are affected. So, if somebody locally makes blankets, you don’t want to ship blankets there. If, we don’t want to ship meat where there is a thriving meat market. Used clothing was one of the biggest pivots that we had to make in the ’70s. Used clothing was becoming a… We realized we were putting tailors out of business as well as now there’s a thriving world market in used clothing, which has put people out of business. So, it becomes now a linkage, a connection, a way to support our partners if there is no local access to those items.
Marlena: Yeah. In fact, your assistance programs currently are much more needs-driven than supply-driven as I understand it. So, who typically determines the needs?
Ann: The local partners in any given country will make a request to the MCC office. Together, they work out, you know, if they need school kits or want school kits, or in some cases need and then that goes on up through the system. But it really is a very small, even though there’s a department for it, it’s a small part of our overall program in some ways of the focus. We see it as a tool that can be useful in itself, but it helps us position partners and also respond ourselves in situations that can open a door somewhere.
Marlena: Yeah, yeah. So, you’ve talked about the role of the local partners. I just want to, again, emphasize for our listeners that MCC has over 450 different partner organizations. Getting all of these partners involved in planning and in the distribution process, it certainly makes it more likely that the items shipped will meet local needs or whatever, however, you are serving those communities will meet the local needs. But what challenges does this raise?
Ann: Well, if we talk about the balance between relief and development, so, sending things, that kind of, humanitarian assistance versus grants, working with partners to do trainings on appropriate agricultural techniques for the area or peacebuilding kinds of things, part of the challenge is if a partner works with a group of people that know that things are available like meat or school kits, they might ask for that over grants that will help them employ local teachers, that kind of thing. So, part of the challenge is not offering too much and saying, “What is it that you need here? Would we be better off doing a local purchase rather than sending things?” So, that’s probably the biggest challenge. Another challenge is, of course, in our own supporters in U.S. and Canada, sometimes we need to help people pivot and say, “No, we don’t need more of X item. We need money to buy locally.” And that’s not as fun, you know, for a partner, I mean, for a constituent. So, that’s the biggest challenge, I would guess. And, of course, anytime you send items, things gets stuck in customs, some of it gets diverted into local markets and doesn’t reach its destination, and those are all kinds of problems. Not to say in the early days, particularly not knowing what we were doing, like sending canned meat in glass jars, shipping in ships, that didn’t work so well.
Marlena: Over time, MCC has gained more of an awareness that poorly directed aid and humanitarian resources can be very ineffective and even harmful.
Ann: That’s right. Absolutely.
Marlena: I’m wondering if you’d give us an example of some of the mistakes in ineffectively distributing resources and what MCC has learned from this.
Ann: Probably, this is not so much maybe focusing on the mistake as focusing on the, well, a mistake, and not understanding exactly what was needed. So, we have often heard back from places where school kids went that instead of a child getting a school kit, there were so many children that people wanted to help, perhaps, the number in the refugee camp increased due to increased migration, that one child might get the bag, one child might get a pencil, one child gets a notebook, because each one has a couple of notebooks, a couple of pencils, etc. And so, instead of one child getting what a child, say, in Nebraska packed thinking about that one person, it might be five or six children. And we couldn’t know that. That has to be decided locally. So, that would be one situation. The whole diversion thing. I remember in Nicaragua in the ’80s, there was a new director of MCC who came to visit, and we took them to the local market which was both the artisan and food market. And I was very chagrined to look at this one stall and realize that there was MCC meat on the shelf for sale. And I wasn’t sure whether to try to hurry on past or not, but I pointed it out. And Ron Matthews was his name, he had a lot of experience. He knew this was quite possible and just tried to explore it with this person who had no idea how she, you know, that it was meant to be given away. That was a good conversation. So, you know, you can’t control those things.
Marlena: Yeah. They’re learning opportunities.
Ann: Yeah.
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: Yeah. Another interesting happening happened in the ’80s when we were in Nicaragua, when there had been some shipments of clothing offered that the church, the local church in Nicaragua actually was requesting because they were under embargo at that point, the U.S. embargo against the government, but from Canada, we could get in shipments of clothing, so, they were asking for that. But what was offered from this group in Canada was a huge number of men’s suits, men’s polyester suits. And so, we talked with this group of women who are trying to start a little store with that in the church and we said, “This probably won’t work. You know, what do you think?” “Oh, no,” they said. “We’ll take care of that. You just send them.” So, sure enough, they came and those women turned those polyester navy blue suits into school uniforms.
Marlena: Oh my goodness.
Ann: A pant leg became a skirt or a vest. It was amazing.
Marlena: Oh, that’s a great story.
Ann: They knew what to do with what didn’t seem to work.
Marlena: That’s a great story. And one of the aspects of MCC today that I value so highly is that, although it never hides its identity and its roots as Christian, its commitment is to serve anyone in need. I read recently about an Indonesian MCC worker who came to visit Ohio, and when he was asked, “Why did MCC build a school for Muslim people after the tsunami?” His answer was, “Because they needed it.” My question is this. Has there been pushback from your constituents to this broad view of service?
Ann: There’s been both push and pushback questions. It goes both ways, I think. You mentioned Gopar Tapkida. And I don’t know if he told this story, but something I remember from his involvement many years ago that really, really has helped communicate with persons in our constituency that might, kind of, wonder why we’re working across faith lines. He and a Muslim imam were partnering and they set up a cell phone, kind of, text, kind of, way to communicate that they could alert each other in communities about impending violent situations, inter-ethnic, inter-religious problems. And they, together, their partnership really reduced and eliminated many, many, many possibilities of death and injury because they work together. And Gopar being able to tell that story has helped people understand why we need to work at this.
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah.
Ann: And it’s, yeah. Another person that works deeply in this is Issa Ebombolo. He founded a partner organization, Peace Club, and he’s dedicated his life. And he has dedicated his life to, this in part, because he grew up in a Muslim family and then became a Christian, but has worked for years to maintain relationships across these lines and has done an incredible job because of his own life experience of connecting. And he’s a winsome speaker and people listen to him. So, yes, all the Anabaptist world is diverse. We do have ongoing support for the work that brings together people of goodwill from many faiths.
Marlena: Yeah. And that’s such a remarkable attribute. So, you talked about, at the beginning of our conversation, that a learning posture is something that’s distinctively Mennonite. And I wanna talk a bit about that. In the 1950s, I think pretty much through the ’70s, the majority of MCC teachers who served abroad were white Mennonite college graduates driven by a desire to make the world a better place. And they went out with the best of intentions, but sometimes unconsciously, they reinforced a worldview of white Western superiority.
Ann: Yes.
Marlena: And I understand the lessons of this era have led to what one might refer to as a more humble self-critical approach and maybe distinctively Mennonite because you talk about learning posture as being that. How has this changed what educational ventures look like today?
Ann: Well, let me first say that this has always existed, you know, the exceptionalism and superiority. It’s both Western, but also very unrelated with being white majority, has always existed, and it is a continual journey that I don’t know when we will ever arrive because we never can quite see what we can’t see. So, I wouldn’t ever say we would have arrived, but it is helpful to look back and say, “What is different in how we are learning now?” So, for example, there are now no direct, you know, no MCCers from the U.S. or Canada work as long-term teachers in the same way that those programs in the ’50s or ’60s. We do have a one-year exchange program that’s called SALT when somebody goes from North America and IVEP, International Volunteer Exchange Program, when they come this way. And some of those folks teach here in Spanish programs in colleges or in daycare or middle and elementary schools and some may teach or help, at least in daycare. It’s probably not lots of teaching. So, there’s more of an exchange. It, kind of, goes both ways. But more than that, the funding for programs more long-term would be to support a school by offering teacher training. So, we don’t do child sponsorship in the same way that other agencies do because we want to affect the system. We want to help everybody to grow. And so, the funding goes to the community to shape teachers, to provide extra things like latrines for schools so that girls can go to school, which they often couldn’t. And the same thing in healthcare. We would not send nurses anymore because there are plenty of nurses in the world, but they need support.
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah. I think in MCC’s early years, the emphasis on education was more as a tool for shaping values and Mennonite identity than as a tool for development. I say this from personal experience. My father was MCC’s director in Paraguay in the mid-’40s. And when some of the teachers in the Mennonite colonies in Paraguay used their influence to promote Nazi values among young people, my father wrote to the MCC executive committee, and we have the letter because my husband and I are writing an historical novel about my parents, but my father wrote that MCC should, and I quote from his letter, “use its influence in the direction of securing the right kind of teachers loyal to Mennonite Christian principles.” And I suspect this would be quite unlikely today.
Ann: That is interesting. I would like to know more about that at some point, but right. I would say now, it would be not Mennonite principles, but around the world trying to live out and share approaches that are life-giving, approaches to ideas about the values of just relationships and non-violence, listening, learning, accountability, mutuality, transparency, those kinds of values. But, not labeling, even though those are values that are owned in the Mennonite community, but they go way beyond.
Marlena: I should hasten to add that that is my father writing this letter to the committee.
Ann: Yes.
Marlena: So, my father was a very staunch Mennonite, and those would have been his words.
Ann: Sure. And that’s how many would have looked at life at that point.
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah.
Ann: Very much so.
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: It’s interesting now, now, when we look at, say, the MCC leaders around the world, so there would be, what we call area directors. There are two in Africa, two in Asia, two in Latin America, one in Europe, Middle East, and they would supervise the country directors. Of those groupings, about over 30% are not persons who grew up in Canada or the U.S. and are not white. And so, when we were having Africans serve in Africa, Latin Americans serving in Latin America, you learn a great, you just see a lot more and it helps the whole system.
Marlena: Yes. Yes. And I’d like to pursue that a little further. In preparing for the interview, I read MCCs own evaluation of its response to Katrina, and it brings up the issue of racism. According to MCCs own evaluation, there was a gap between good intentions and effectiveness in this initiative. And the self-assessment suggested that the organization struggled with its own internal racism which reduced and diminished what could have been a significant role that local people of color had in shaping the response. And, of course, this is an issue that’s, once again, at the forefront in our society today. I quote from one of your documents. “The capacity for anti-racist accompaniment depends, to a large extent, on MCCs willingness to struggle with its own cultural patterns and habits of internalized and institutional racism. In the absence of such a struggle, there remains inevitable risk for doing harm.” And to me, that’s the ultimate statement of a learning organization. By what process has MCC confronted its own cultural patterns that may get in the way of its mission?
Ann: Well, again, it is a continual process and more than one process that has to be renewed with each age generation and, in some, cases each year.
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: Right now is a time that I sense an openness within MCC and within supporters for change that I have not experienced for a long time.
Marlena: Yes. We’re all being called to awaken.
Ann: It is a huge task and it’s an incredible opportunity. So, in the June meeting, the board, very specifically asked MCC U.S, this would be internally not within the U.S., not our international program, to come back by August with a strategic plan for how we are addressing racism. And so, the meeting I was in just before this, I was with the regional directors from each of the regions, and we were walking through what were, taking stock of what our initiatives are and what they will be, we’re talking about doing a racism audit with, of MCC, we’re working at specific ways to talk to each other, transforming groups. Se already have required of persons of color and white balance on the boards. That’s part of the bylaws. And we’re developing some curriculum. There’s been call for bystander training when an act of racism occurs, either a word, which might be seen as a microaggression or more overt act.
Marlena: What is bystander training?
Ann: Often, we’d think of bystander training in relation to sexualized violence, or comments, or harassment. And so, it’s when something happens in front of me that’s wrong and I don’t know what to say. So, for example, requests that we’ve gotten more recently said, so, from churches or groups said, “Okay. So, what do I say when my uncle so and so says don’t all lives matter? Why are we concerned about black lives matter? Or what do we say when because I wish they’d just go back to Mexico?” Those would be times in which bystander training will be helpful in saying, “What can I do in the moment, whether it’s a family member, a coworker, or perhaps even something on the street?”
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah. And I think what you’re pointing to is that it is a systemic issue, and yet it’s each of us individually that needs to wake up and continue waking up and it’s a process that never ends.
Ann: Right. Yeah.
Marlena: Wonderful. I’d like to talk a bit about health initiatives. Throughout MCC’s history, two central tensions have persisted in health programming, the tension between short term relief and long-term change, and also between direct management and partnership. And I certainly witnessed those tensions in my father’s leprosy work in Paraguay. So, you’re both director of MCC and you’re a health care expert. And so, I really, really want you to comment on the unique aspects of health initiatives that make these sets of tensions, especially challenging.
Ann: Well, you knew I’d like to talk about health, didn’t you?
Marlena: Yes.
Ann: I started my work in internationally or I started my work as a healthcare person, as a brand new nurse, working in Nicaragua, doing deliveries, doing, you know, training of local health workers, and then I’ve taught for over 30 years, and I would not send a student as a frontline worker, only in an emergency situation and only if there was nobody else available. So, that’s, sort of, the same thing you were saying is that we changed. And I would say that an example of that is I moved from being a direct health worker in the ’70s to the ’80s, working with a group of young medical students in Nicaragua who wanted to form an agency to provide health care from a Christian perspective. They were idealistic. One of them was living in our home and so we got in on the building blocks. So, MCC helped them start, and they are now a large, large NGO in Nicaragua, Christian Medical Action, who for a time in the ’90s were providing almost all the healthcare on the Eastern part of the country. And now, they have even moved to training, to working at HIV/AIDS, to working at community organization, community building, because they see that as the basis of health and they want the healthcare system to deal with the actual direct healthcare. So, even they have moved to long-term change and they’re still an MCC partner, but certainly, the kinds of things we were doing in the beginning such as helping them get… I remember we would get these sheets of surplus, listed surplus medical things. So, anywhere from delivery tables to medications that were not quite expired to tape, to surgical tape. And I give them this list and say, “What do you need?” And because of the embargo at that point, they had lots of needs and it helped them. I remember particularly the tape, it was such a huge help for them to be able to go to hospitals because there was so little tape for bandages, and they could hand these things out. But that would never happen now. And so, even then it was interesting because it was first I did it, and then they were doing it and now they are helping others do it.
Marlena: Yeah. That’s wonderful. What is it about healthcare uniquely that leads to challenges as you lift more direct control? Is there something about it? Like, I’m thinking about things like uniform standards, safety, it seems to me that those would be uniquely medical issues that one would have to address as you begin to give up some of the direct control.
Ann: Yeah, yes. It depends how you define standards. So…
Marlena: Good question. Yeah. Can you address that?
Ann: Well, if you look at something like sterile technique, as a nurse, I was trained what the standard quality, gold-standard quality is for sterile technique, where the field is, what you touch, what you don’t touch, what you keep sterile, what you don’t. But we were also trained that you respond to the closest to what you can in that given situation. So, if you don’t have the means, you know, what is the higher risk? Doing a delivery with no gloves or not helping a woman with her delivery?
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: You know? So that you have to look at the range of risks. What is the risk of not doing it with given standards that most people learn about, and know about, and care about, but they can’t do it?
Marlena: Yeah.
Ann: And so, you just, sort of, back up and say, “People are doing the best they can.”
Marlena: Yeah. What you’re just saying now leads me to wonder what oversight is there of medical initiatives? As it becomes more and more localized, what is the level of oversight?
Ann: Well, we would not have any oversight over any direct care. We have relationship with some clinics, but often, hospitals or clinics have been established and then turned over to local leadership. We have a partnership, particularly with a clinic in Nigeria that’s very well run. And they do not need any Western oversight. They need help with some supplies or connections to how to make and how to access antiretroviral medications. But they don’t need any oversight because they know what they’re doing way better than we do.
Marlena: Oh, what you’re saying just reminds me of a quote that I love from an indigenous Australian artist and activist, Lilla Watson. She said, “If you’ve come to help me, then you’re wasting your time. But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.”
Ann: Correct. Yes, yes, yes. Exactly.
Marlena: And MCC U.S. and Canada have a covenant agreement that your overhead will not exceed 20%. And in recent years, I believe it’s hovered around 17%. It’s increased over time, but it’s still really low compared to other nonprofits. I wanna say as a former strategy professor and consultant that the widespread belief that nonprofits who minimize investments and overhead deliver better results may sometimes be very misguided. You are a business, and as you grow, you need to invest in your infrastructure to succeed at your mission. It’s that simple. So, how do you balance the need to pacify skeptics who object to a charity using their donations to cover overhead with a very, very real need to invest in your organization’s survival and growth?
Ann: Well, isn’t that the ongoing forever question? I came to the staff position as a former board member, and that was certainly part of our board discussions. What does it mean? How do we monitor this? What does it look like out there? And certainly understanding that there is a line, I mean, there is always this push we could do better, we could go to more conferences, we could have more staff in the offices in the U.S. because then we can better support the field. There is always a push to grow. And so, it’s a constant monitoring, you know, what needs to be done here, what needs to be sent there? What does the field need? What do our partners need from us, and how much, you know, how much frankly, do we, how many staff do we need for fundraising?
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah.
Ann: And we’re in that conversation now because with the cuts based on the current financial situation because of the pandemic, where do we cut? What part of staff do we cut? Do we cut in our fundraising? Do we cut in HR who are trying to take care of people around the world? Do we cut with our program leadership who are trying to figure out how to pivot the programs to be appropriate in COVID? We just keep looking at balance, balance, balance. They can’t do it. They can’t have the fieldwork, the project work can’t go forward if there’s not somebody supporting it.
Marlena: How do you… Go ahead.
Ann: But at the same time, we have to constantly question ourselves, is this needed or is this just a want to grow?
Marlena: Yeah. How do you educate your donors to focus on evaluating you based on leadership, governance, results, rather than simply what’s your percentage of overhead?
Ann: I’m guessing at that level, we have to do more conversation. It’s not something we can put in a brochure or on a website. We might be able to have a statement about it, but I think it has to be more in conversation because we have to understand what somebody’s question really is, and what they’ve heard from other places that, you know, you mentioned the perception. Without a conversation, you can’t address where these perceptions come from and what it might mean.
Marlena: Spoken like a true leader of a learning organization. One of the aspects of being Mennonite for me, and for most, I think, and people generally know this about Mennonites, is the importance of living simply. I’m wondering if you could comment on how this attribute of living simply is reflected in MCC’s service around the world?
Ann: Well, I could tell you stories about how many conflicts we’ve had internally about what simple living means. Does it mean we can have a toaster? Does it mean…
Marlena: That’s good.
Ann: You know, we can get legalistic about a whole lot of things. But I also, maybe something that sums it up is when our son and daughter-in-law were serving in Iraq a couple of years ago, the comment was, Katelyn, our daughter-in-law said she heard a number of times was when going to a meeting of NGO. So, there’d be these meetings of a whole variety of NGOs to give an update on the situation, the security situation, or who was doing what in response to emergencies. And somebody would say, “Whose bicycle is that out front?” And they’d say, “Oh, it must be the Mennonites.” Because, MCCers are, sort of, known for not showing up in a car with a driver.
Marlena: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ann: They might have their own vehicle, but more often than not, it might be they’ll show up in a taxi or their own bicycle. So, I think for myself, my litmus test is that, okay, if I ever get to a point where I’m not comfortable sleeping in a home, in a visit, a home that has a dirt floor, then I have lost my moorings.
Marlena: That’s a pretty powerful litmus test. Yeah. And if there were one last thing that you would like our listeners to hear, maybe something we talked about, but you would like to reiterate, reinforce, or maybe something we haven’t covered at all, what would that be?
Ann: Well, I know that this series is about service, and I think I would just encourage people to look at their own lives, or each of us to… We can’t be who we are. I can’t know who I am in relation to how I am to serve without hearing other stories, right? In the end, we live our individual lives, but we live them out in a community. And everybody that I meet anywhere has a story. Whether I feel attracted to hearing that person or whether I feel like I’m not sure that I want to go there, everybody has a story that I can learn from. And I would just say, you know, hear stories. Yeah.
Marlena: Stories are powerful. This has been a rich and very meaningful conversation, and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
Ann: Well, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate this. I appreciate your interest, and I’m very eager to read your book.
Marlena: Oh, thank you very much.
As Dr. Ann says “everybody that I meet anywhere has a story. “ I think the big question in today’s highly fragment world is ––are we willing to listen.