How do you honour a contract to plant 100,000 trees when nobody wants the job? As a Mennonite Central Committee coordinator in Labrador, Nelson Scheifele called the provincial correctional centre nearby for help.
This was just one of Nelson and Joy Scheifele's experiences as MCC Canada program coordinators in Labrador for six years. Their jobs included administration, supervising up to 10 MCC workers, development and education work, and Ten Thousand Villages sales. They recently returned to Waterloo.
The tree-planting began as a government make-work project for people on social assistance, but low pay and costs would have left them no better off. So Nelson arranged for four to five prisoners to be picked up each day--with their lunch bags because they were not allowed to enter any building even to buy coffee. There were no supervisors and no prisoners tried to escape.
"This is a non-traditional correctional centre," said Scheifele. "About 80 per cent [of the inmates] come from north coast Inuit communities and have committed offences under the influence of alcohol. They are not dangerous and they love to be out-doors." Prisoners on day passes often helped with snow removal and other tasks around the town, he noted.
The prisoners can now improve their education, thanks to MCC influence. Scheifele raised funds through foundations, MCC and matching government grants to build a classroom on the prison grounds. Prisoners did the construction.
Among Joy's responsibilities was supervising Ten Thousand Villages craft sales. In 1996, she began organizing pre-Christmas sales in coastal villages, along with classes in 10 schools that focused on the countries from which the crafts came. CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) funds the education program.
An interesting cross-cultural exchange occurred when wood carvers from Kenya met Inuit stone carvers, both from the local art gallery and from the prison. The Kenyans also toured the prison and had tea there with staff.
"They were blown away by the openness, the cleanliness [of the prison]," said Nelson. The native carvers, who use sophisticated power tools and are fiercely independent and secretive about their materials, were suprised by the Kenyans' primitive tools and the notion of cooperatives and apprenticeships.
"One of the learnings [for the Labradorans] who feel at the bottom of the heap," said Nelson, "was the revelation of even poorer people in other parts of the world."
Over their six years in Labrador, the Scheifeles observed a marked shift in relations between native people and the government.
"The native people had very little political skill or clout, but that has changed," they said. They have gained some concessions like alternative justice for offenders. Labrador "drives the agenda" for native peoples in Newfoundland/Labrador. Native people are much more a minority in Newfoundland, explained Nelson.
The Scheifeles worked with area ministerial and social service agencies. As in all MCC programs, from economic development to carpentry training to work with sex offenders, the goal is to have the Labrador programs run by local people.
Mediation training in St. John's and Labrador, once done by resource people who flew in from Winnipeg, is now done by resident MCCers Larry and Susan Dunn. Eighty people have been trained through the program.
MCC's presence in the province since 1954 will continue. Replacing the Scheifeles are Bill and Pam Stevenson from Clinton, Ontario
On April 1, Nelson began a new position as head of the Mennonite Aid Union in Ontario. Joy plans to take some time out before settling into a new role.--Ferne Burkhardt
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