By Charles Kwuelum  Could you imagine a world where all children have the same rights and opportunities? A world where school-age children, boys and girls, receive adequate education? According to the United Nations, about 57 million children do not attend school globally, with half from sub-Saharan Africa. The lack of opportunity and infrastructure in education is a hurdle to human health, growth and sustainable development. Access to education at all levels, particularly for women and girls, is an indispensable antidote to poverty. In South Sudan, UNICEF estimates that more than 50 percent of children between the ages of 6 and […]

Editor’s note: Michelle Sinclair is the daughter of columnist Melodie Davis and writes occasionally for Another Way. She works in the advertising department of a major daily newspaper. She and her husband have two small sons. For some, September is a month for checking out the bevy of new TV shows rolling on air. My family is barely aware of what’s on TV, let alone what’s new. For now, it’s lovely having no background noise or commercials to worry about. Our house is loud enough! My husband and I never set out to be a TV-free household. In fact, one […]

The Queen of Katwe could be your typical sports triumph movie: a coach discovers an unusual talent who wins with amazing skill, overcomes major hardships, considers quitting after a setback, but in the end wins it all. Director Mira Nair, however, uses this true story with its setting in Uganda to create a larger tale. She asks Katende where her safe spaces are, like those he has taught her to look for on the chess board. She studies chess and practices endlessly as she pursues her dream to become a master. It is a story of triumph, and I couldn’t […]

By Burton Buller World War I proved a watershed era for Mennonites for two reasons. One, Secretary of War Newton Baker’s requirement that all conscientious objectors report to military camps where they were “encouraged” to enlist caused many Mennonites to put on the military uniform, mostly to serve as non-combatants but frequently as full military inductees. Doing so distanced these young men from the historic teachings of the church forbidding military service. Two, the Mennonite communities themselves came under attack, ramping up the rate of acculturation to unprecedented levels. From the time of their arrival in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1683, […]

By Monica Scheifele At the end of August, staff from Mennonite Central Committee’s advocacy offices in Ottawa, Washington and at the UN gathered in New York for our annual face-to-face meeting.  We began our time together with a devotional on Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well and their conversation about “living water.” We were reminded that, as a Samaritan, the woman represented “the other” for Jews like Jesus – and yet Jesus reached out to her, honouring her dignity and her agency. Two weeks later, Canada’s members of Parliament returned to Ottawa to resume the first session of the […]

The only lull that occurs at a Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings concert is when Jones invites audience members onto the stage to dance with her. Most of the time, the chosen few will try too hard to find their 15 seconds of fame as they attempt to overshadow Jones with goofy, ill-advised dance moves. Jones may stand 4 feet 11 inches tall, but it’s impossible for anyone to overshadow her. Jones gave up a music career at some point because “some record label told me I was too fat, too short, black, and old.” Now 60 years old, Jones […]

This is an old topic, as old as the words of Jesus—one of the wisest philosophers who ever lived (and a whole lot more, but we’ll just go with this description for now). Jesus knew a great deal about human nature. Jesus told his followers and others who lived in his time two thousand years ago that to have faith in God, we must become like little children. Small children can provide wonderful reminders of what it means to have trust. We must be like little children in what we know and accept. Not childish. Jesus keenly pointed out the […]

As much as I enjoy young adult fiction, I’ve been burned by widely popular novels before (Veronica Roth’s Divergent series was a notable disappointment). When I discovered my favorite audiobook narrator, Polly Lee, had performed Soman Chainani’s bestselling trilogy, The School for Good and Evil, I embarked on the series with deep reservations. Could the world-building and characters make me believe in the story? Or would there be a fatal flaw in the presentation that would be too distracting to transport me away? What is the nature of Good? What makes a person Evil? How does True Love fit into […]

When I was 13, my family took our “once-in-a-lifetime” trip to the western United States, with a small travel trailer. One of our joyful discoveries was camping frequently in the large chain of national parks, especially in the western states, and which offered nature, education, Sunday worship opportunities for campers, trails, adventure, and beauty all in one place. Our local park—and I suspect many others—was formed out of land that had been a family’s farm or land. Sometimes this land had been in a family for generations—with or without an actual title deed. For our dollar, these parks were much […]

The latest Disney remake of one of its older animated films (the original Pete’s Dragon was made in 1977) is an improbable choice, because the animated film wasn’t very good, and translating this story to live action would appear to be challenging. Nevertheless, relative newcomer David Lowery was given the task of writing and directing a live-action version of Pete’s Dragon, with surprising results. Pete’s Dragon stars Oakes Fegley as the young five-year-old Pete, whose parents are killed in a car accident, leaving him alone in the woods. Pete ends up staying in the woods for six years, surviving only […]