A year of service, a lifetime of transformation

"The one year I spent with IVEP has transformed my life." – Vikal Pravin Rao, IVEP participant, India to the U.S., 1993-94

"It opened my eyes to other cultures and gave a new direction to my career." – Rita Rosario, IVEP participant, Brazil to Canada and the U.S., 1976-77

"My life path has been so much influenced by what I learned that year," –Mweendalubi Dubeka, IVEP participant, Zambia to Canada, 2003-04

Since 1950, more than 3,900 young adults from around the world have taken part in MCC’s International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP), spending a year living with host families, worshipping in local congregations and serving in work placements.

And in November, in honor of IVEP’s 75th anniversary, IVEP alumni came together — in a virtual Zoom call reaching hundreds of people across the globe; in a weekend of events at the MCC campus in Akron, Pennsylvania; and in gatherings from Bolivia and Paraguay to Zimbabwe and Kenya, to India and Bangladesh. 

Across time zones and countries, they shared stories, memories and account after account of the difference that IVEP had made.

"The impact this program has given in the lives of young people, it’s beyond imagination," said Vikal Pravin Rao, who came from Chhattisgarh in central India to serve with IVEP in 1993-94.

Settling into his IVEP placement in Akron, Pennsylvania, he was shaped by how he saw his host parents, Phil and Cindy Horst, live out their faith.

"I learned from their life, their simplicity. What does it mean to follow Jesus? What is the true meaning of discipleship?" he said. "That touched me deeply. I thought I should also serve."

These kinds of connections — the moments that lead to transformation, the testimonies and ties built slowly over months of shared meals, lives and experiences — are exactly why IVEP was formed. 

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After World War II, MCC relief workers in Europe saw the difference that meeting with people who had been called the "enemy" had made in their lives. They dreamed of an MCC program that would, as longtime IVEP leader Doreen Harms once recalled, bring young people to the U.S. or Canada for a year "to live and work, worship and play with people here in their homes, communities and churches."

Harms was asked to bring that dream to life — and would spend most of her four decades at MCC shaping the program.

In 1950, the first 21 young adults in the new program — all men, all from Europe, all required by MCC’s agreement with the U.S. government to work in agricultural settings — boarded ships for the U.S.

That was just the beginning. The first female participants came in 1951. In 1955, the program welcomed a participant from Japan and another from Paraguay in 1956. Other countries were added, work assignments broadened.

Over 75 years, young adults from more than 80 countries have taken part. 

And as they do, participants — like Leonard Triyono, who left his small village in Central Java, Indonesia, to serve with IVEP in 1978-79 — step from the world they knew into new cultures, languages, food, weather, customs.

"When I learned I had been selected for IVEP, I was thrilled, anxious, and terrified all at once," Triyono recalled. "My English was limited and my world was small, but my heart was wide open."

In Souderton, Pennsylvania, in the home of hosts Andy and Ruth Rosenberger, his language skills grew. The cornflakes and cold milk at breakfast — a jarring change from the fried rice that usually marked his mornings — in time became a welcome treat. 

He still treasures a crocheted blanket that Ruth Rosenberger made and shipped to him in Indonesia, a few years after his IVEP time, with a letter saying there was "love in every stitch."

And he vividly recalls the welcome he found in the second half of the year in Berne, Indiana, where youth at First Mennonite Church invited him to meals and ballgames, on adventures to Chicago and St. Louis.

As he returned to Indonesia, he found that it wasn’t just his appetite for cornflakes that had shifted.

"IVEP had changed how I saw the world and my place in it," he said. "It taught us to listen more deeply, to see beyond stereotypes, and to value service above self."

At the anniversary gathering in Akron, Pennsylvania, as IVEP alumni each wrote a word representing their year onto a square of fabric, testimonies stretched across the room: Life-changing, transformative, wonder, learning, blessing, connected, breakthrough, launch-pad.

Nestar Lakot wrote "instrument."

"The blessings I got through the year and what I learned through the year has helped me be an instrument of blessing to others," said Lakot, who grew up in a small village in Uganda and served with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2006-07.  

She drew a tuning fork on her quilt square. "Just like a tuning fork gives you the key, I believe the experiences, the knowledge, the person I have become because of this program, the way I reflect on things ... changed so much."

As young adults in IVEP are shaped and formed, they in turn spark change in their host families, workplaces, churches and communities.

Since 1982, some 40 young adults from 22 countries have served at Hinkletown Mennonite School in Pennsylvania through IVEP, sharing their cultures and traditions as they gain teaching experience.

"It brings the world to the students," said principal Miles Yoder. "It helps the students to have a worldview larger than Lancaster County."

Rachel Nolt, now pastor of Akron Mennonite Church in Pennsylvania, was 10 years old when her family welcomed a young adult from Poland into their home in northern Michigan. "And with his arrival my small rural world expanded exponentially," she said, sharing during the IVEP anniversary global Zoom call. Her own daughters were 9 and 11 in 2012 when she and her husband welcomed Brenda Perez from Paraguay into their home in northern Indiana.

"In all relationships we learn to offer grace and forgiveness to each other, but especially in cross-cultural relationships, in a close family setting," Nolt said. 

"Through my experience as an IVEP host mom, I’ve learned to see with new eyes, to question my assumptions, to be open to new ways of doing things."

Today, literally across the globe, alumni are living out the love and growth they experienced in IVEP and shaping the lives of others.

Take Rao. After retiring early to devote more time to ministry, he has served as general secretary for the Mennonite Church of India and is now a regional representative for Mennonite World Conference (MWC). His family has hosted young adults from Asia and Africa as they serve in the Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network (YAMEN), a joint program of MCC and MWC.