New MEDA projects to provide support for African entrepreneurs
Two new MEDA projects will advance the efforts of African entrepreneurs.
Weaving the Evolution of Activities in the Investment Vehicle Ecosystem (WEAVE) is a three-year project designed to expand employment opportunities for African youth, particularly young women.
The $13.6 million effort, funded by the MasterCard Foundation, complements MEDA’s existing MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund project. It targets support for emerging women-led investment vehicles and will stimulate targeted and active participation of young women entrepreneurs, in partnership with organizations in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda.
By providing financial and business support to young female micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas, WEAVE aims to empower 300 young women micro-entrepreneurs within three years.
In the medium term, it will stimulate the development of 2,200 young women micro-entrepreneurs in the portfolio companies that the Africa Growth Fund has invested in.
WEAVE will also work to increase the skills, capacities, systems, and networks of 20 emerging women-led investment vehicles and 1,000 women leaders.
Supporting Nigerian agriculture
Global Affairs Canada is funding MEDA’s new Resilient and Inclusive Agri-Food Systems
Empowering Women and Youth (RISE) project in Nigeria.
RISE is a five-year, $20 million initiative designed to create 8,000
decent jobs in Nigeria's agri-food sector by improving productivity, financial access, climate resilience, and market integration in the maize, rice, soybean, and groundnut value chains.
MEDA will lead RISE in partnership with Sahel Consulting and a consortium of Nigerian partners, reinforcing a locallydriven, private sector-led approach to development
Mennonites in Honduras
An ecumenical Honduran Mennonite organization is one of MEDA’s partners in a new development project.
The Mennonite Social Action Commission (CASM) is working with MEDA in the new Opportunities for Circular and Inclusive Diversification (OCIDA) program.
OCIDA, funded by Global Affairs Canada, MEDA’s individual donors and Lutheran World Relief, is a is a five-year, $12.3 million (Canadian) initiative. It will strengthen market systems for producers and entrepreneurs working in the coffee, cacao, and horticulture sectors of Honduras’ Dry Corridor, with a particular focus on job creation for women and youth.
CASM’s role in the project relates to gender equality and social inclusion issues. This includes facilitating trainings on a variety of life skills and rights issues and creating a network of gender equality champions in rural communities to do education on violence prevention.
Other partners in the project include Lutheran World Relief, Fundacion para el Desarrollo Empresarial Rural (FUNDER), ALTERNA, and Fundación Capital.
Biblical advice for leisure time Ontario entrepreneur Leon Martin views a passage from the New Testament gospel of Luke as being a guiding passage for how he spends his time. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, more will be asked.”
Read about his business career and international volunteer efforts in this issue (page 17).
Honors for Manitoba man
Congratulations to Manitoba resident and MEDA supporter Jack Heppner on being awarded the King’s Coronation Medal (King of England and the British Commonwealth). The medal honors individuals who made notable contributions to Canada or attained achievements that reflected positively on the country.
In 2017, Jack Heppner took charge of a small grassroots initiative aimed at establishing a community garden in the town of Altona. Over the past seven years, he and his task force expanded the garden from just a few plots to 180, including accessible options. They equipped the space with all the necessary tools and supplies for gardeners to thrive.
They also spearheaded the development of a central commons area, which features a timber frame pavilion and washrooms. The community gardens have evolved into a space for building connections as well as a site for locals to cultivate food. Almost half of the gardeners are newcomers to Altona, which means that every gardening experience is shared with individuals from Eastern Europe, Central America, Africa, and South America. .
Paying attention to your check engine light
Understanding our patterns can help us realize when spiritual maintenance is required. By Nathan Good
Promoting passion fruit
A new chapter for MEDA and CODIPSA
MEDA sells stake in Paraguayan starch company. CODIPSA will invest alongside MEDA in another venture.
MEDA partner empowers Kenyan farmers to increase yields. 15
Automating the fabrication industry
Leamington spinoff firm led by Dave Fehr (right) helps companies keep their big machines operating.
CODIPSA's third starch plant, in San Pedro, Paraguay.
A personal check engine light can be valuable for soul care
By Nathan Good
What is your check engine light?
I started working with a spiritual director 10 years ago. I try to be vulnerable and honest with everyone in my life. However, some things are not appropriate to share in some settings.
Parents tell each other things they would never share with their children. Leaders discuss things that might not happen. Pastors wrestle with questions that may not be helpful for their congregation.
The timing when something is shared is as important as the content of what is shared. Deciding what and when to share is a delicate balancing act. Some of us don’t share enough. Others share too much.
Seeing a spiritual director creates a space where it is appropriate to share everything. I don’t need to think about who is listening or what impact my words will have.
My spiritual director listens well, asks hard questions, holds me accountable, and checks my blind spots. Ultimately, this helps me grow in my walk with Jesus, which impacts every area of my life.
his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.”
We all fall into patterns of speaking or acting that are not in the way of Jesus. In the past, I would carry a lot of shame around these things. I would beat myself up or believe that I wasn’t good enough.
that maintenance is required. Sometimes you get the code read and find you can keep driving for quite a while. Other times, maintenance is needed soon. If the check engine light is blinking, you stop the car immediately and get expert guidance.
Certain actions or thoughts have become check engine lights in my life. I have identified patterns that tell me that maintenance is needed. This maintenance can look like patterns of Sabbath, prayer practices, service opportunities, intentional Bible reading, journaling, and more.
One of the biggest changes I have experienced is being more aware of my own internal state.
Jesus says, in Luke 6:44-45, “Each tree is recognized by its own fruit … A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in
My spiritual director has helped me to see that these external actions are symptoms. God loves me regardless of how I act. When I act contrary to the way of Jesus, it does not make me less lovable, instead it reveals that I am resisting the Spirit of Jesus.
One of his favorite illustrations is a check engine light in a car. You can keep driving with a check engine light, but it lets you know
Back in August, I got in a minor accident with our Malibu. I finally scheduled the bodywork in December. When lining up the appointment, the shop said that if everything went well they would complete the work in three days.
On the third day, I called, and was told that our car was still waiting to be disassembled.
I expressed my frustration, explaining that we had been promised something different. Without going into the details of the whole exchange, as it progressed, I found myself getting quite frustrated. I was talking forcefully, my blood pressure was up, I was short of breath, and I could feel that I was no longer fully in control of my emotions, thoughts, or words. Thankfully,
Many problems could be solved by church and business leaders working together, study suggests
More than seven in 10 American Christians believe that some of the world’s greatest problems could be solved by pastors and entrepreneurs working together, a new study by Barna Group suggests.
Barna is a California-based Christian polling firm. It conducted the research in partnership with Faith Driven Entrepreneur. Faith Driven Entrepreneur is a global movement and community. It focuses on helping Christ-following entrepreneurs find their purpose and community.
to have this sort of influence.
Speakers at a webinar this winter unveiling the results of the Barna study cited other studies noting that small businesses are nine times more trusted than politicians.
The report, “Entrepreneurs: Untapped ProblemSolvers in the Church,” examines hopes that Americans have for what churches and entrepreneurs can accomplish together. It also explores what this could mean for pastors.
Barna did an online survey of 1,800 US adults and 400 teens aged 14-17 last July. It also conducted separate surveys of 653 Protestant US senior pastors and an additional 248 entrepreneurs.
Belief in possible positive outcomes from such collaboration is even higher among entrepreneurs than it is among the general population. Eighty percent of Christian businesspeople believe these partnerships could help solve global problems, Barna reports.
Higher trust in businesspeople Entrepreneurs are well placed
The church is facing a pivotal moment of challenge and opportunity, said Jason Forman, co-founder and executive director of Faith Driven Entrepreneur. “With trust in traditional institutions waning, Christian entrepreneurs stand uniquely positioned to help the Church remain salt and light in their communities.
“Entrepreneurs aren’t just business leaders; they’re problem solvers who can see opportunities where others see obstacles, and create value where others see scarcity,” he said.
Studies have found that small businesses are trusted by twice as many people as those who trust the Church.
“Christian entrepreneurs consistently demonstrate their heart for ministry through both their business practices and church engagement,” the Barna study says. “Many see their work as a direct expression of their faith, leading with biblical principles in the marketplace.”
About a third of pastors surveyed suggested that strategic planning and innovation are the two most useful skills
entrepreneurs could bring to the Church.
Pastors also named young professionals ministry and job placement ministry as specific ways entrepreneurs could serve or provide guidance in the Church.
But pastors might need to be challenged to think bigger and more strategically about partnering with entrepreneurs, the report says.
Among US adults who are familiar with the term entrepreneurs, 87 percent agree that entrepreneurs and business owners have a responsibility to give back to their communities.
Nearly half of those surveyed believe entrepreneurs are driven by a desire to make an impact. Barna found that 71 percent of religious entrepreneurs see their business as a way to practice their faith principles in the workplace.
Generous givers
That intentionality applies to church giving practices. The study found that 36 percent of active religious entrepreneurs give 10 percent or more of their income to the Church. Sixteen percent of past entrepreneurs do likewise, compared with 14 percent of all others.
Just over half of the pastors surveyed (51 percent) consider themselves to be somewhat entrepreneurial. Fifty-three percent of pastoral respondents say the Church could learn a lot from entrepreneurial thinking.
Almost all pastors surveyed say they have a responsibility to help people in their churches find purpose and meaning in their work. But only 39 percent say they
feel equipped to provide counseling on matters of career decisions and work-life balance.
Work-life balance?
Part of this may arise from the confidence, or lack thereof, that pastors have in their own life-work balance. Only 16 percent of pastors rated their work-life balance as excellent. By comparison, almost three times as many entrepreneurs are satisfied with their own worklife situation.
Importance of mentorship
More than 50 percent of Christian entrepreneurs believe their mentor had a significant impact on their entrepreneurship journey. Likewise, 71 percent of pastors who have been mentored say their mentor had a significant impact on their faith or ministry journey.
However, only 17 percent of
pastors saw mentorship or counsel on organizational management as something entrepreneurs may need from them. And 95 percent of pastors agree that pastors have a responsibility to help their congregants mentor others.
A previous Barna study found that just over half of churchgoers who have a mentor met that mentor at church.
Small groups for entrepreneurs
Previous Barna research has found that “small groups that disciple make attendees feel that they belong and are like family.”
Many small groups are segmented by life stage or geography.
More than half of the pastors surveyed in the new study express interest in starting a small group for entrepreneurs. Barna found that typical ways of organizing or
categorizing small groups can leave entrepreneurs feeling that they do not fit neatly into any of them. Sometimes entrepreneurs feel that the groups do not understand their professional instincts, challenges, or experiences.
Using gifts to serve God in the Workforce
Eighty-four percent of practicing Christians say they are aware of specific gifts and talents God has given them. But 62 percent of those people wish they had a clearer understanding of how to use their talents to serve God.
Only one in five respondents think of their pastor as a source of wisdom for vocation and career. But, study results suggest that pastors have relevant counsel to share, on such topics as living wisely, leadership development, and innovative thinking. .
Perfecting the passion fruit pursuit
Partnership with MEDA-supported lead firm helps farmer increase crop yield
In areas where the timing and duration of rainfall is unpredictable, maximizing farm income can be a challenge.
This is the situation facing Milcah Katumbi Kitivi, a smallscale passion fruit farmer in rural Kenya.
Passion fruit is a popular and significant crop in Kenya, cultivated for both domestic consumption and export markets. People eat its pulpy, juicy seeds or squeeze it to make juice. The fruit is also used in pastries and other baked products.
Kitivi is a widow with two children. Income from farming provides for her children, including their school fees. “I live, I drink, I sleep farming,” she says. “That is what I know.”
Currently, only one-quarter acre of her land that she has planted in passion fruit is under irrigation. Limited water prevents her from irrigating the other threequarters of an acre of her plot. That means it will only produce fruit during the rainy season.
Passion fruit has a relatively short fruiting cycle. Depending on the variety and growing conditions, Kenyan farmers can get up to three harvests a year.
Support from MEDA partner Feast Foods Processors Limited, a company she has been selling to since 2023, is improving her resilience.
Feast Foods is a six-yearold firm that processes mangos, passion fruit, and pineapples. It sources fruit from farmers and cooperatives in six Kenyan
counties, including Kwale, where Kitivi grows her passion fruit.
Feast Foods aims to offer stable, competitive prices to farmers, even in times when the market prices are fluctuating. The company is a lead firm partner of MEDA’s LEGEND project.
LEGEND is an acronym for Leveraging Equality for GenderInclusive Economic Development. It is a five-year initiative funded by Global Affairs Canada and individual MEDA supporters.
LEGEND works to contribute to improved economic prosperity for women, youth, and other underrepresented populations in Kenya’s horticulture, aquaculture, and poultry sectors.
By partnering with Legend, Feast Foods has been able to double the number of farmers
it buys produce from to 1,000, significantly increase its production capacity, and hire three additional agronomists to train farmers.
MEDA is also assisting the company to furnish a lab that will allow it to do chemical analysis and quality control tests on site.
Training that Feast Foods provides to farmers, such as Kitivi, includes orchard management, supplementary irrigation, pre- and post-harvest handling, integrated pest management, composting, record keeping, access to finance and financial literacy skills.
Kitivi has received support from Feast Foods to set up roof gutters to harvest rainwater. She knows that as her farm grows, she will need to move beyond this short-term solution
Milcah Katumbi Kitivi grows passion fruit in Kwale County, Kenya.
Photos by
Edward Machila
and acquire irrigation technology. A proper system would allow her to simply turn on a tap instead of relying on unsustainable, labor-intensive manual watering.
When Kitivi started growing passion fruit, she was unaware of the correct techniques and support structures, such as a trellis or fence, needed for the crop to grow properly. She has now implemented these, improving her crop management.
Kitivi is pleased that Feast Food offers standardized prices for her crops, providing her with predictable and stable income. Last year, she was able to use the proceeds of her crop sales to build a new poultry house on her property.
Before starting to work with Feast Foods, Milcah had small harvests from
Training provided by their agronomists taught her essential techniques needed for passion fruit farming, including pruning.
Making those changes has increased her yields and the quantity of fruit Feast Foods purchases from her.
Fruit sales allow Kitivi to pay two full-time employees who water and weed the vines. She does the pruning.
During the rainy season, when everything is green and her passion fruit thrives, she feels at ease. “During the rains, every plant is happy,” she says. “Everything is saying hallelujah.”
Being able to sell her produce to Feast Foods at a competitive price gives her stability and peace of mind. .
Facts about Feast Foods Processors Limited
Feast Foods makes pineapple juice and concentrate, passion fruit juice and concentrate, and mango pulp. The Kenyan firm is doing trials to make additional products with oranges and bananas. However, it first needs to make sure that enough fruit is readily available for production.
Before it became a MEDA lead firm partner through the LEGEND project, the company had 19 permanent staff. It also hired between 30 and 70 casual (daily) laborers based on production schedules. It now employs 25 permanent workers and 50 to 100 daily laborers.
Setting up a new software system to
automate finance, human resources, and data management activities will benefit the company and its farmer suppliers. The system will allow the company to pay farmers digitally once produce is dropped off at a collection centre.
The launch of that system will allow it to hire additional staff for collection centers. Currently, Feast Foods has 15 collection centers in Kwale County that are not staffed.
Staffing those centers will allow clerks to verify produce quality as it is dropped off and provide immediate payment to farmers. The software system will also allow the company to track the volume of produce that has been delivered. That would provide real-time data to plan production more accurately.
It also believes that broader access to irrigation technology could play a crucial role in encouraging more farmers to stay engaged in farming.
One of its major goals is to increase production from the current levels of 50 to 60 percent to full capacity. Doing so would allow it to work with more farmers and increase employment at its processing facility. .
Maxwell Baraka Mrira and Job Mukwana in the Feast Foods processing facility
her vines.
Passion fruit is an in-demand crop in Kenya.
Photo by Edward Machila
Serving up more than coffee and muffins
Waterloo café takes a relational approach
Covenant Café is more than your average coffee shop.
The Waterloo, Ontario restaurant has enjoyed rave reviews since it opened in the summer of 2023. It serves up healthy portions of community service and connection alongside its
scrumptious meals and desserts.
“The vision we had when we opened up here was to have an atmosphere of, just safety,” said Steve Bauman. Bauman is an investor in the venture who does the café’s books in addition to his regular job managing an Elmira
furniture store.
“A welcoming, safe place for people to drop in, have a meal, have a coffee, and hopefully we can show the love of Jesus,” he said. “That was the idea here.”
Covenant Café is a family affair. Steve Bauman’s niece
photo by LOF Photography
Coffee sold at Covenant comes from 1 less Coffee, a Canadian firm that distributes freshly roasted coffee from Choix Sinaloa, Mexico. Each cup sold supports an orphanage in Sinaloa, Mexico.
The building is often used for community-focused events, both secular and faith-based, after the business closes for the day, once
cleaning has been completed. In the winter, community games nights are held on Thursday evenings. Nothing is sold during those events, which are inspired by similar cafés in the US. (see sidebar on US cafés next page.)
On another night, a woman holds knitting classes there. One Saturday evening in March, a local guitar player organized a worship event.
Children’s ministry leads group to establish a Waterloo café
An innovative Waterloo café that focuses on community outreach has its roots in two rural churches ministries to children from low-income housing complexes.
About 25 years ago, the Woodlawn and Countryside Mennonite Fellowship congregations connected with lowerincome housing projects in a Waterloo neighborhood through a church member who was a nurse.
The Treasure Seekers’ ministry began with a summer Vacation Bible School program, Jason Bauman said. Later, church members “would also pick up some of the children every other Sunday and take them out to church for Sunday School and the church service, and go to a family’s home for lunch, one of the families from church, and just spend time with them that way,” he said.
Other activities were added, including boy’s and girls’ clubs for different age groups during the week. The clubs would include a Bible lesson, crafts, and other activities.
Bauman got involved in the boys’ club 10 years ago. Around the time he and his wife Steph got married, they started getting involved with the Sunday afternoon program for boys and girls. Back then, they were still driving the children to the Countryside church gym, a 45-minute round trip from Waterloo.
Renting a nearby Waterloo school gym simplified matters. Then the COVID pandemic ended community rentals and indoor gatherings of large groups.
“At that time, there were three different housing complexes that we were in touch with the families, and picking up the children from,” Jason
Bauman said. “There were maybe 40 to 50 children out a day. There was a fair bit of crowd control, too.”
The need to have smaller gatherings led to splitting the groups into three and doing events outside as the weather permits. They get everyone together a few times a year. They have an outdoor event in the summer, sometimes at a member’s farm, and an indoor event hosted by one of the church youth groups in the winter.
The mid-week boys’ and girls’ groups have a short devotional but aim for a hands-on focus and fun interaction. The Sunday afternoon programs are more Bible-focused but still include games and a craft. Jason and Steph moved to Waterloo eight years ago. “One of the reasons for it was just to be more physically connected to the families we are reaching out to, instead of driving 20, 30 minutes into the city every week,” he said.
“We wanted to be here, and one of my long-term visions was to have a physical establishment like this, too.
“ A café is kind of a more personable business. There’s more opportunity to sit down and get to know people.”
The Baumans’ vision was to use the café to “connect with the families that we already know, but also the broader community too.
“My desire for that ministry is to have it organized enough that there’s stability, but not have it so organized, or so large that it becomes just an operation, if you know what I mean. I want it to be personable and long on relationships.”
Church volunteers use the café space
in the evenings for youth group events after it has closed, and some rainy Sunday afternoons. “It’s definitely got us more into the broader community, rather than just those three housing complexes too,” Jason said.
His future ideas for using the café as a community space could include English as a Second Language classes and culture or geography awareness evenings where people share about their culture.
“That would be my desire with the space, making sure we don’t lose the focus or the vision of using it as a way to reach out to the community and share God’s love that way, too.”
Asked about his definition of success, Jason tells the story of a man who comes into the café most mornings for breakfast after finishing an overnight cleaning job.
The man, a retired pastor, “comes and sits in the corner here, reads his Bible, and prays. He talks to anybody who sits next to him, and he will quite quickly turn the conversation to Jesus.”
Bauman thinks the man has led a few people to Christ. “If nothing else, he has left a big imprint on their lives. That is probably (success.) He has become a really close friend.”
“God has blessed us financially too. I know the restaurant industry is not a getrich-quick industry. People ask me, is it doing better than you expected? …
“ I would have to say, yeah, it’s been better than I expected… We haven’t been stressed on the money side of it, which is a huge blessing as well.
“There’s a lot of regular customers that our staff has built friendships with, and that to me is success too.” .
Jason Bauman, Steph Bauman and Cherylyn Bauman behind the counter
photo courtesy
Alyssa Kuepfer/Alyssa Creative Co.
MEDA sells its stake in a successful Paraguay starch manufacturer
MEDA has sold its stake in CODIPSA, a successful Paraguayan cassava starch processing firm that it invested in 16 years ago.
CODIPSA’s repurchase of the stake was completed in December.
A MEDA delegation visited Paraguay in 2023. That visit, which included meeting senior staff members and executive board members, led to an offer from CODIPSA in November 2024, said Wendy Clayson, MEDA’s chief financial and investment officer.
This was after four years of looking at different exit options, including external buyers and shareholders, initiated by Orvie Bowman, Clayson’s predecessor.
CODIPSA is the largest starch company in Paraguay, handling over 60 percent of the country’s starch production. About 80 percent of the more than 50,000 tons of cassava, tapioca, potato, and corn starch it produces annually is exported.
Its products are exported throughout North, Central, and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
CODIPSA is also the largest MEDA-created, North Americasupported business that survives and thrives, Paraguayan author and professor Werner Franz said at MEDA’s 2023 annual convention.
In a statement, CODIPSA praised the support of MEDA and its supporters. “The financial support brought by MEDA was not only
crucial to our launch but also consolidated as a true strategic alliance based on commitment and a shared vision.”
CODIPSA noted the significance of MEDA’s investment, and that some of MEDA’s North American individual supporters also backed the company.
In 2023, CODIPSA operated four plants, with about 200 employees. It produced manioc on 10,000 acres of land, buying manioc from 1,500 farmers, with about 10,000 people affected positively by its operations, Franz said. Sales in 2022 reached $51.1 million US.
MEDA invested about $800,000 US in CODIPSA in 2009, one year after the firm was created by a group of Mennonites to industrialize cassava production, reducing rural poverty by providing a market for smallscale cassava farmers. Since that time, MEDA has received dividends of about $700,000, which has been allocated to other MEDA investments.
The estimated fair market value of MEDA’s investment at the time of the sale was $2.3 million. However, in an innovative arrangement, MEDA agreed to accept a payment of $1.9 million, 85 percent of the book value.
The remaining 15 percent of the purchase price will be invested by CODIPSA alongside MEDA by the end of this year, in a company that has yet to be negotiated.
CODIPSA says it looks forward to further collaboration with MEDA in a new investment venture.
“We are sure that together, we will continue making a difference in the projects that we will work on in the coming years.”
The sale is part of MEDA’s philosophy of aligning its investments with countries or regions where it currently has projects. .
Bags of product fill a CODIPSA warehouse.
A CODIPSA staffer bags processed starch.
six pallets at the end of a shift, start it, and come back the next day to another four hours of run time. Over the course of a year, it would give Uni-Fab 28 unmanned days in the CNC department,” he said.
The return on investment for a uni-fab automation system is typically about two years. Fehr estimates the working life of the systems to be 15 to 20 years.
Fehr’s co-owner in the business is his father, Uni-Fab founder Abe Fehr.
“Abe Fehr has always wanted, it has always been his goal, to have something, a product (line) that he built and sold,” Dave said. “Here we go.”
Abe Fehr and his youngest daughter, Mary, Dave’s sister, own Uni-Fab. “He’s still the big name in both companies, and we’re just doing the day-to-day for him.”
Dave Fehr is working to practice the lessons that Uni-Fab learned as it grew, internalizing a similar culture.
He started working for UniFab during the summers and after school from Grade 8 on. His first job was deburring — a finishing process that removes sharp edges, burrs, fins or inconsistencies from the material.
“I’ve been through pretty much every department on the shop floor. “
He left the area to study architectural technologies in Calgary, staying in Western Canada for 12 years. During his time away from Leamington, he worked as a chef in Whistler, did road construction in Edmonton, worked for an electrical engineering firm and then moved into sales and project estimation with a glass and shelving company.
Ontario, he worked in Uni-Fab field installation, including a conveyor line for a Leamington firm and at a Boeing plant in Russia (before Boeing exited that country).
He subsequently worked in sales, estimating, and project management before starting the automation division.
To date, uni-fab automation has sold systems to companies in New York, Chicago, and Massachusetts.
It recently finalized a deal with the US division of Okuma. Okuma, a Japanese firm, is one of the largest CNC companies in the world.
Fehr originally wanted uni-fab automation to have its salesperson dealing with customers. He switched that strategy to deal with CNC OEMS (original equipment manufacturers) and machine dealers as distributors.
When he returned to
uni-fab automation does private labeling to a customer’s specifications “so they can sell it with their own CNCs.”
That approach ensures system compatibility and removes the need for uni-fab automation to do service or training, which is handled by the distributors.
Some machine dealers in the European Union have expressed interest in Fehr’s automation systems. But he wants to firmly establish the company’s footprint in North America before expanding elsewhere.
The partnership with Okuma has generated a request for 55 units a year. Given that a typical lead time for a unit is currently between 14 and 21 weeks, Fehr has some scaling to do. The current staff of four will grow to 10 or 15 within the next year.
“It’ll be a drastic expansion, not only going from where (parent company) Uni-Fab typically is — a custom manufacturer, build to drawings, build to customer specs — to now we’ve developed a product that we’re trying to develop a whole product line for, and then building that production line, which is something we’re not used to.”
Once current uncertainties around US tariffs are resolved, Fehr sees greater expansion ahead. Supplying Okuma and several other small partners will require building 100 to 150 units a year. “We’d probably be looking at at least 20 to 30 people (on staff),” he said.
Fehr is currently subcontracting much of his labor, electricians and PLC (programmable logic controller) expertise from Uni-Fab. “Over time, I would like to bring that in house,” he said.
uni-fab automation is an integration partner with Siemens, the German multinational technology conglomerate.
Fehr’s company runs its products off a Siemens system and gets help from Siemens engineering worldwide. “I’m just in the process of dealing with them for Siemens marketing,” he said. “We’re hopefully going to be able to use Siemens’ worldwide platform and market our stuff.” .
Explaining the automation advantage
Ontario agtech firm partners with Cargill in Brazil
An Ontario-based agtech firm is partnering with Cargill to optimize animal feed supply chains in Brazil.
BinSentry and Cargill are introducing artificial intelligencepowered tools to help pork and poultry producers improve efficiency and profitability.
BinSentry is a Kitchener-based firm that develops sensors to monitor feed bin levels. Cargill is a multinational food corporation that is the largest privately held company in the US in terms of revenue.
The partnership makes Cargill the exclusive distributor of BinSentry’s inventory management system in Brazil, the companies said in a press release.
This move builds on a fouryear collaboration between the two firms in North America. BinSentry’s solar-powered, selfcleaning sensors monitor feed bins with 99 percent accuracy. The systems allow farmers to manage feed in real time, avoid running out of feed, and eliminate the need for manual inventory checks.
BinSentry’s system monitors over 25,000 feed bins in North America.
Failures
in vertical farming
US vertical farming company
Plenty has filed for bankruptcy, TechCrunch newsletter reports.
The company has received almost $21 million in financing as part of a proposed restructuring plan. It will continue to operate a strawberry farm in Virginia and a plant science research and development (R&D) center in Wyoming.
Over the past 11 years, the California firm raised nearly $1 billion in funding from various investors, including SoftBank Investment Advisers, Walmart, Bezos
Expeditions, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as an angel investor.
Viewed by some as an important future food source as the climate changes, the industry has seen several prominent bankruptcies. Last November, agtech unicorn Bowery Farming was reported to be folding after raising more than $700 million in funding. In 2023, AeroFarms and AppHarvest filed for bankruptcy protection. AeroFarms had raised more than $300 million from backers.
AppHarvest raised more than $700 million before being taken public in 2021 at a $1 billion valuation; it filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2023.
Recycling gone wrong in Ghana Massive amounts of electronic waste are sent from Western
countries to the Agbobloshie dump in Accra, Ghana, where components are dismantled at considerable risk to the health of the people who live on site in tin shacks.
In his new book “Waste Wars,” Alexander Clapp explores the environmental, human and security concerns posed by Western offloading of worn-out, cheap consumer goods to landfills in the Global South.
In much of the world, Clapp concludes, farming has been replaced as a default economic activity by picking through vast heaps of toxic trash. .
Would you like to comment on anything in this magazine, or on any other matters relating to business and faith? Send your thoughts to mstrathdee@meda.org
fabricating with a generator.
The David Martin sect split from Old Order Mennonites in southern Ontario in 1917, the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia says. Now known as the Independent Old Order Mennonite Church, church members “do not use electricity or own automobiles and farm tractors.
But through the use of stationary engines and power plants a high level of industrialization has been attained, and the group is on the forefront of area industry and commerce.”
The shop owner offered to let Martin and his partner work in the shop on the honor system. They paid $15 an hour rent and kept records of all the steel they used.
The shop was the largest steel purchaser in the area at the time. It ordered steel by the ton and let Advanced Millwrights buy that steel for two cents a ton more than it paid.
The shop owner also demanded that Martin and his partner pay all their other business bills before paying him.
Martin still struggles to understand the man’s actions. “Why would a Dave Martin do that for us? They were a sort of closed community. He was a generous man, and we weren’t the only ones in there doing that (using the shop at a low price).”
Advanced Millwrights grew to the point that they had six guys working on a project. Martin did not worry about seeking new jobs, as they had two months left on their current project.
Then one Tuesday in February, their client called to say that he
was out of money. The Advanced Millwrights work would end in a few days.
His partner, who was a farmer, returned to his farm work. Martin drove around looking for work, without success in the next few months.
“At seven o’clock in the morning, I prayed: Lord, if this is what you want me to do, is there a sign, something? What am I supposed to do with my life?”
That morning, he got a call from a farmer in Barrie, two hours north. The farmer offered to hire
the company if they could do the work that same day.
“The next morning, another phone call came in. Another day’s job. We did that. And every day, another phone call kept coming in.”
Martin thought: “if this is what the Lord wants me to do, and he’s blessed me with this, I have to somehow start giving back.”
“From that day on, we kept growing.”
As the years passed, the jobs got larger, and in some cases, much further away.
In 1994, Martin went to China, to do project management for a feed mill in Daoming.
A firm in North Carolina learned what he did. It hired him to test and sign off that their equipment had been installed properly.
That relationship allowed Martin to travel to 40 countries. “Some of it was short notice, some of it was long notice. One week at a time, paid to go and see that the equipment was (correctly) installed.”
In 1995, Advanced Millwrights had the opportunity to build Riverside Brass (a brass and aluminum foundry based in New Hamburg, Ontario).
But the project was much bigger than Martin’s firm could handle, given the materials required.
The late Ervin Steinmann, a longtime MEDA supporter who headed Riverside Brass, solved that problem. Martin recalls taking an invoice to Steinmann.
“Next day, there he was with a cheque. “Who does that? It was always 30, 60 days (to get payment from other customers.)”
“Ervin paid us the next day. The cash
Changing a grinding disc on a hand grinder.
Leon Martin teaches a boy how to operate a wood planer.
followed us all the way. We were there for almost 10 years after that, doing maintenance. We worked for a year to build the plant, and it was
a great opportunity. He helped us and blessed us.”
In 2003, Martin’s partner wanted out of the company due to
Mentoring as mission
health issues. Martin had to buy out the partner and look for a new lender.
In 2005, he landed a large
Entrepreneur uses skills to support African development projects
A 1994 work trip to China ignited Leon Martin’s passion for working with others overseas.
Near the end of that trip, his translator asked if they could have tea and talk together that evening. “Her words were: ‘What is different about you? You don’t get mad at these people, you don’t swear, you don’t yell.”
She told Martin that she was part of a group of people who wanted to study a certain book. “It starts… In the beginning.”
Martin realized that she was talking about the Bible. So he went back to his room, got his Bible, and gave it to her.
She started crying and told Martin that her group had been looking for a Bible for many years. They could not find a Bible.
He often wondered after returning home “Whatever happened to that Bible?... What did the Lord do with that group of people, through that Bible?”
He viewed the China trip as a great experience, one that opened the door to further travel. A firm in North Carolina learned what he did. It hired him to test and sign off that their equipment had been installed properly.
That relationship allowed Martin to travel to 40 countries. “Some of it was short notice, some of it was long notice. One week at a time, paid to go and see that the equipment was (correctly) installed.”
In 2019, he was asked to help set up a feed mill in Zambia. Martin spent 10 days there building (grain) hoppers and doing welding.
His coworkers on that trip taught farmers how to succeed in farming pigs and chickens, providing microfinance support. He was pleased to see the farmers’ openness to aggressively pursue new opportunities.
“That’s what we want to see in Africa, people helping themselves get ahead, not handing out, but helping up.”
Martin, who grew up on a pig farm, was
surprised to see how clean the pigs were. “We never washed our pigs.” He found the care given to the animals to be incredible. Many volunteer opportunities followed. After returning from Zambia, he was asked to help a friend’s son in Ghana. That person had a food factory that was exporting its cassava-based production to the US and Canada.
Martin got there in September 2022, helping to expand and modernize the cassava factory.
In 2022, he joined Future of Africa, a charity that works with Ghanaian children who live on the streets of Accra, the country’s capital.
Future of Africa provides a four-year, holistic wellness, technical education program. It also does entrepreneurship training for homeless youth aged 13 to 17.
“These kids in Africa are so eager to learn, it’s hard to walk away on them.”
“If someone’s that eager, it’s so easy to stay and teach.”
In 2023, Martin visited MEDA projects in Nicaragua and Tanzania.
After the Tanzania trip, he signed up to help mentor businesses involved with MEDA.
He took part in sixteen weeks of virtual meetings with a Tanzanian food company, then spent a week there in December. That trip included measuring the plant and getting an idea of what the firm wanted to do.
He was asked to help design the equipment. “I want to go back and see them start. I want to be there when they open it up.”
In January and February 2024, he visited Ghana, working with Future of Africa to set up a welding and woodworking shop for street boys. He converted a container into a shop and bought many tools the boys had never seen before.
He also taught guys how to weld stands for picnic tables. “These boys protected their tools like they were their livelihood.”
In November he returned to Accra, Ghana for the month. That trip involved converting a 40-foot sea container into a hair salon. The salon will help street kids learn the trade of cutting hair.
He plans to visit Zambia this spring to help set up two feed mills with Bright Hope International. Bright Hope is a US charity that does relief and development work in Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, Haiti, and Bolivia.
In October, he will visit Ghana for the 10th-anniversary celebration of Future of Africa and transform a sea container into a training center where people can learn to sew.
He hopes to volunteer with MEDA in Liberia on its new Mano River Basin (Harvesting Prosperity) initiative to expand rice production and processing.
To prepare for that opportunity, he visited a rice research center and some rice farms in Louisiana in March.
His wife, who isn’t interested in traveling, encourages him to go on these trips. “This is where you’re supposed to be right now,” she told him. “When the door opens, you’ve got to go.” .
Leon Martin headshot by Mike Strathdee
Leon Martin has no plans to retire from volunteer trips.
contract with steelmaker Dofasco. But he couldn’t find a bank to finance the work. “I thought, I am doing this.”
He started the project and then his firm’s cash dried up. Someone with spare cash gave him money to continue the work until he could find a willing bank lender.
“Another kind act. Why do people do this for me?”
The success of that project reinforced his conviction of the need to give back.
Two years later, his daughter traveled to the Philippines to work with children living in dumpsites. Martin agreed to sponsor that work for five years through the International Teams charity.
Shortly after ending that sponsorship term, he was approached to sponsor Crane Lake Boys camp. The camp works with troubled boys who struggle to get by in school.
Meanwhile, his company kept growing. The success of the Dofasco work allowed it to get into robotics and recycling. “It opened a lot of doors for us.”
In 2015, he listed the company for sale. He wanted to divest the firm by his 25th anniversary with it. Two months later, it was sold.
Martin is a tall man who enjoyed playing high school basketball in Elmira. He was one of three people who invested in launching the KW Titans professional basketball team.
He also bought a 100-acre cash crop farm, returning to his roots.
But there was not enough for him to do with the basketball team. He got bored and realized his investment money could do more good elsewhere.
In 2019, he met a man who asked him to help set up a mill in Zambia. A10-day stint of building grain hoppers and welding seeded an interest in working to train
people in Africa. There would be many more volunteer trips to Africa. (See sidebar, page 20)
In 2020, he started another business MOC (Make One Call) Deliverables, which provides catalyst handling for oil refineries. He got the idea for that firm after doing some equipment setup in Fort McMurray, Alberta four years earlier, just before he sold his millwrighting firm.
MOC has no permanent staff, choosing to hire companies for each job it does.
In early January, Martin was in the middle of a project in Sarnia, Ontario, and looking forward to an upcoming trip to British Columbia.
After that, a project in Mississauga will be his last job as a business owner.
He is considering offers from three potential buyers to purchase the firm, which he says needs millions of dollars in investment to take it to the next level.
While he is looking forward to no longer running a business, he would like to do consulting for the new owners. “They’re interested in that. They want me to stay on as a consultant.”
Martin has no plans to slow down. He celebrated his 65th birthday in March and has many projects ahead. “If you retire and do nothing, it’s a good way to die early.” .
Discussing a cordless drill.
A boy stains a picnic table that Future of Africa taught him how to build.
Tales from the trenches of church life
A Strange and Gracious Light: How the Story of Jesus Christ Changes the Way See Everything by Andrew Arndt (Herald Press, 2025. 180 pages, $19.99 US)
Andrew Arndt is a pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. He is charismatic both in leadership gifts and in worship style.
The book contains hundreds of snippets from his life as a pastor. He quotes the Bible, and scholars and teachers from all over the theological map. His style is energetic and lively. Most of the pastoral examples are when things work out well, while some disappointments have been difficult and challenging.
He uses the Church Year, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost to frame his comments on the Christian life.
Arndt tells the reader who the intended audience of the book is. “Maybe you’ve tried church and found it not especially miraculous or merciful. Or maybe it was, and something went terribly wrong. The word of the Lord got twisted and you got hurt. Or maybe church just doesn’t make sense to you. I get it. If that’s you, then this book is for you too.”
These kinds of people, who have left or never started at the church will not read Arndt’s book. He articulates the Bible well and tells exciting stories out of his own ministry, but I do not find it for seekers. He is honest about a difficult time at one of the churches where he has been the pastor. It is raw, and I appreciate his openness to this kind
of pain. But I think the book is for insiders like me. .
Fred Redekop has been in ministry for over 40 years. He retires this spring.
A call for Christians to take community seriously
Never Alone: Sharing the gift of community in a lonely world.
By Michael Adam Beck
(Herald Press, 2025. 216 pages. $19.99 US)
As a young person growing up in the Anabaptist tradition, I took community for granted. In “Never Alone,” pastor Michael Adam Beck urges us to take it seriously. Community, Beck says, is not simply one expression of Christian faith, but an essential outpouring of Christ’s love in our isolationist culture. It is a gift to be generously shared with fellow Christians and secular folks alike.
Theologically, Beck ties this all into salvation, which may make some readers uncomfortable. Still, his articulation of the loneliness epidemic, healing communities, and how we can reach from one into the other is poignant for our time.
Beck tries to appeal to an audience across the political spectrum and alienates some of them in the process. Several examples and images he uses attempt to appease the right and the left but instead use language or ideas that are unhelpful or even offensive to both. While the ideas in this book are important, I worry this attempted appeasement may alienate many readers.
“Never Alone” is a helpful introduction to socio-theological concepts relating to loneliness, isolation, and community. I recommend this book for readers without an academic background but with an interest in theologies of loneliness and community. .
Marnie Klassen is a Toronto writer.
Beck makes a strong argument, backing up his ideas with Biblical theology and sociological research. While I may not agree with all his underlying theology, he and I come out on similar sides of key issues. Yes, our culture is polarized and isolated, and yes, the church has the opportunity to do something about it.
Finding ways to make workplaces worth staying at
Why Are We Here? Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants by Jennifer Moss (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025. 243 pages. $30 US)
Jennifer Moss does not sugarcoat workplace challenges.
Work feels like going to school without art, gym, or recess, she writes in her new book “Why Are We Here?”
For increasing numbers of employees, that is not good enough.
“Right now is the most complex and confusing time to be a leader in modern history,” she writes.
Two in five workers believe the world of work is fundamentally broken. One in four wish they did not have to work at all. And things may get worse before they get better. A Mercer study found that 81 percent of workers are at risk of burnout within the year. Two-thirds of senior executives predict a stormy or turbulent outlook over the next 10 years.
Books in brief
US workers turn retirement age every day – due to Boomer burnout.
The Great Breakup has led hundreds of thousands of women to leave the workforce in recent years. FOBO, fear of becoming obsolete, threatens worker wellbeing and retention.
By 2030, there will be a global talent shortage of more than 85 million people. Yet only 32 percent of firms say managing the talent shortage is their top priority.
How, Moss asks, can companies hope to achieve their top goal, growth, without addressing current and future workforce skills needs?
Managers must cope with the Great Retirement – 10,000
Fortunately, “Why We Are Here” thoughtfully explores many
answers to these challenges.
Eight chapters on the topics of hope, purpose, community, compassion, freedom, openness, belonging and recognition explain the importance of these concepts to worker engagement and retention.
Moss argues that genuine caregiving by managers is a critical component of effective leadership. Inauthentic expressions will be seen as manipulative “carewashing.”
Purpose is the “linchpin for sustained engagement, fulfillment, and performance in the workplace.”
The prescriptions in this book will not all be easily implemented, going as they do against sociopolitical currents.
That they ring true should make “Why We are Here” required reading for managers committed to holistic success. — MS
