Mennonite
Central
Committee

MCC calls for school kit donations

Marla Pierson Lester
August 29, 2006

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) needs thousands of school kits this fall to meet requests for shipments to countries including Jordan, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Of all the material that MCC sends across the globe, school kits are the most pressing need. "It's the one piece where we're really quite short," said Dave Martin, material resources manager for MCC.

Some 26,000 kits will be sent to Jordan, and kits are still needed to fill that shipment. MCC is also sending kits to Haiti and Kazakstan.

Honduras has requested some 14,000 school kits this fall, and Nicaragua has requested thousands of kits as well. This year, MCC has also shipped roughly 26,000 school kits to Iraq and 8,600 kits to Afghanistan.

While supplies remain low, Martin said he's heard of many groups that are now working on school kits. "This is the season people get excited about putting school kits together," Martin said. "Hopefully there'll be a lot coming in."

Already, at the Material Resource Center in Ephrata, Pa., stories of generosity abound. Leone Wagner, a volunteer coordinator for the center, was approached by an Amish woman recalling how she had told her husband the women in the district had set a goal of making 350 school kits. "The husband said, 'I don't know why you'd stop at 350. Why don't you do 1,000?' So they're doing 1,000 kits in their district, which would be a church basically," Wagner said.

Early in August, a woman came in bringing a single kit. Neville McDonald, regional material resources manager, thanked her, asking if she'd heard MCC was sending 26,000 kits to Jordan. She said yes, but that this was all she could afford. "To see her walk in with just one, it makes a lot of difference," said McDonald, referring to the story in Luke 21 where a widow offers all she has to God.

"Every one is an important kit," he said. "Every one is going to a special child."

From April 2005 through March 2006, MCC shipped 119,449 school kits to some 17 countries. Iraq received more than 26,000 school kits, and Honduras received more than 20,000. More than 13,000 kits were sent to Jordan and to Sudan.

"We're grateful for the generosity of people who put these together," Martin said. "This is one of our most-requested and most-appreciated items. We're so thankful when people come together to help us meet the needs."

 

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