Canada

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) helps people develop skills for creating peace in their families, neighbourhoods and nations.

MCC encourages and supports local churches and community groups in their efforts to provide food, health care, education, employment and social services. 

MCC sends people, food and material goods to communities recovering from war and natural disasters.

MCC encourages exchanges of visits, gifts and prayers between supporters and those with whom we work around the world.  These exchanges highlight for everyone the gifts, needs and wisdom of others.

Vision
Restorative Justice seeks to demonstrate Christlike responses where harm and wrong doing had been done,  focusing on situations involving the criminal justice system.  Restorative Justice also seeksconversation with churches about the high calling that the 'ministry of reconciliation.'

Approach
Partnering with and supporting existing church-based restorative justive initiatives wherever possible.  Our hope is that in journeying with people bound up in the harm of wrongdoing, the church will come to a greater realization of its own calling as a faithful witness to the redemptive, transformative work of Jesus Christ.

Why Restorative Justice?

1. Restorative Justice offers a new way of seeing the harm that has been done by supporting the victim and providing accountability to the offender.
2. Rathan than focusing on blame and punishment, this approach embraces a biblical understanding of justice in which both vicim and offender become involved and empowered as they move towards healing and transformation.
3. The role of community, particularly the church (Matt. 18), is key to the restoration of right relationships.
4. This Christian response is rooted in an understanding of Christ's life, death and resurrection, mandating the church to become a reconciling agent in a broken and hurting world
   (2 Cor. 5).

For more information contact Stephen Siemens.