Bogotá, Colombia – Mennonite and Brethren health care leaders from around the world are developing a network to foster collaboration and support among related organizations. The leaders of the emerging Global Anabaptist Health Network (GAHN), a Mennonite World Conference (MWC) supported group, are issuing a survey and a global call. GAHN invites Anabaptist health organization leaders and individual health professionals from Mennonite World Conference churches to participate.

Building on the foundations of a 2003 meeting in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, more than 90 health care leaders from 18 countries met 19–20 July 2015, preceding PA 2015, to worship, learn from each other and think creatively about how Anabaptist-related health care organizations and those working in this field might cooperate. This group drafted a document calling for development of a Global Anabaptist Health Network.

“It is essential that GAHN be built upon the capacities, expectations, values and consensus of its future members,” says GAHN coordinator and former associate general secretary Pakisa Tshimika.

The task force formed at that meeting invites Anabaptist health care professionals to complete a survey (see link below) to help them gauge interest, identify priorities and expand the web of partners as they work to develop the vision, mission, structure and membership of this emerging network.

“MWC is looking forward to the emergence of this new network,” says MWC general secretary César García. “We celebrate every effort that encourages cross-cultural interdependency and the sharing of gifts in our global family of faith. Service is easier and stronger when we do it together.”

For Tshimika, the network is the fulfilment of a decades-long dream for “a space where Anabaptist health professionals and institutions from around the globe could meet to share and exchange on subjects of common interest.” Click here to participate in the survey.

—Mennonite World Conference release, with files from Larry Guengerich