The Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission announces the award of two archival grants: the 2017 infrastructure grant and the 2018 summer internship.
Mama Makeka House of Hope was awarded a $2,000 archival infrastructure grant in December 2017 to outfit the newly-constructed library/archives room at the Mazala Center for Professional Resourcing in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The money is earmarked for a scanner, computer, printer, video recorder, hard drive and archival storage boxes and supplies.
The Mazala Center is a resource hub, promoting education, peacebuilding, health care and research, particularly in the Congo, the Great Lake Region of Africa. The infrastructure grant will provide the tools needed to preserve, describe and make accessible the historical records relating to the development of Congolese Mennonite churches.
Emma Sorensen is the summer archival intern for 2018. The selection committee chose Emma from several strong candidates from various universities and colleges in the U.S. and Canada.
As a summer intern, Sorensen will spend a total of five weeks visiting each of the MB archival centers in North America (Fresno, Hillsboro, Winnipeg, and Abbotsford) during the months of May and June 2018. In addition to discovering the unique character of each of these Mennonite archives, she will explore the stories and images housed in them.
Sorensen’s interests are Mennonite relief and development initiatives and migration patterns—the theological promptings that shaped them initially, the ways they have changed over time and the prospects for shaping Mennonite communities of faith today.
Sorensen is a third-year history student at Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, California, Her home congregation is Rosedale Bible Church, a Mennonite Brethren church in Bakersfield, California. The internship comes with a stipend of $2,000.
See http://www.mbhistory.org/news.en.html for news of past recipients
The Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission is responsible for fostering historical understanding and appreciation within the Mennonite Brethren Church in Canada and the United States. It fulfills this goal by: coordinating the collection, preservation and cataloging of Mennonite Brethren conference archival records and publishing books and audio-visual material relating to the history of the Mennonite Brethren Church.