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History

West Coast Mennonites, in particular those in California, have been closely involved with the work of Mennonite Central Committee since its beginning in 1920. California Mennonites played significant roles in the events leading up to MCC’s founding in the years immediately following World War I, and have remained closely involved in the decades since its creation.

 
As early as 1917, California Mennonites gathered to discuss the plight of their fellow church members in Russia and to discuss how they might address this situation. In 1919, two California Mennonites, Martin B. Fast and Wilhelm P. Neufeld, accompanied a shipment of relief supplies to Siberia. They did so one year before MCC sent its first relief workers to Russia. Mennonites in the Reedley area conducted the first “MCC relief sale” in 1922, over twenty years before such events were to become commonplace. In the late 1940s, West Coast Mennonites did their share in helping to create a network of Mennonite mental hospitals across the United States. In 1975 West Coast MCC became the first formally organized regional MCC office in the United States. Though far removed from Akron, Pennsylvania, West Coast Mennonites have played an integral part in planning for, giving birth to, and developing Mennonite Central Committee.