This semiannual feature highlights the recent works of Quaker organizations* in the following categories:
- Advocacy
- Consultation, Support, and Resources
- Development
- Education
- Environmental and Ecojustice
- Investment Management
- Retreat, Conference, and Study Centers
- Service and Peace Work
*Editors’ note: We invite all explicitly Quaker-founded and/or Quaker-run groups and organizations to submit to the Quaker Works column. Most, but not all, are 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. The content is supplied by staff members of the organizations and edited to fit the style of Friends Journal. More details can be found on the Quaker Works submissions page.
Advocacy
Quaker United Nations Office
Throughout a trying year when progress at the United Nations (UN) seemed stagnant, Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) remained committed to seeking peace through peaceful means.
This peace-centered approach informs both QUNO’s high-level work engaging international representatives and stakeholders within the UN system and its more focused work of accompaniment. A prime example of the latter is QUNO’s ongoing series of “Peace Game” simulations.
Developed and facilitated in partnership with American Friends Service Committee and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, Peace Games are alternatives to war games. In war games, nations carry out simulated military actions as political posturing or preparation for war. In keeping with Quaker values, Peace Games seek instead to foster conversation and collaboration as participants take on the roles of various states, international bodies, and non-governmental organizations to diplomatically solve fictional yet plausible problems.
QUNO and partners have hosted three such simulations on sustainable energy initiatives and resolving conflict on the Korean Peninsula, with plans for more. The Peace Game series has shared discussion techniques and highlighted the importance of diplomacy with a diverse network of UN stakeholders who can then share a peace-centered approach with their colleagues. QUNO will continue to organize Peace Games in hopes that more and more of the UN community will adopt their principles.
Quaker Council for European Affairs
Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA), based in Brussels, Belgium, brings Quaker concerns about migration, climate, and peace to Europe.
In the 2024 European Parliament election in June, more than 450 million citizens across 27 member states elected 720 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Facing a polarized European political landscape, QCEA undertook a project to promote compassion, integrity, and respect among MEPs and incoming EU Commissioners.
Beginning in September, QCEA sent personalized postcards to first-time MEPs and as many others as possible. The message on each postcard asked them to base their work on compassion and integrity. A small textile gift crafted from recycled materials by QCEA supporters accompanied each postcard. These items serve as a tangible reminder of the human and environmental stakes of policymaking.
Throughout the rest of the year, QCEA will offer training sessions for the staff of MEPs. Training topics include active listening, mediation, and handling difficult conversations—skills that will help equip staff to navigate a complex political climate.
Through these efforts, QCEA aims to cultivate a political environment that prioritizes humane solutions and meaningful dialogue, ensuring that the interests of both people and the planet are at the forefront of European governance.
Consultation, Support, and Resources
Quakers Uniting in Publications
Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP) is an international network of Quaker authors, editors, publishers, and booksellers concerned with the ministry of the written word. The group’s goal is to share, in print and digitally, Quaker values. QUIP offers spring and autumn educational programs and shares members’ recent publications more widely.
The website has a membership form as well as the application for grants from the Tacey Sowle fund, established to subsidize translations and publications in less affluent countries.
The QUIP 2024 fall program will take place on Zoom on October 5, 2024. A panel discussion about using online platforms and social media to promote Quaker books will feature Stephen Cox, Sarah Hoggatt, Paul Jeorrott, and Sally Nichols.
Public Friends
Public Friends is a new nonprofit founded in 2024. Quakers believe that God may call anyone into ministry. But not everyone is called to sustained public ministry. The mission of Public Friends is to ensure the future of Friends in North America by supporting and developing Quaker ministers to a professional standard.
Public Friends is currently working on three projects: (1) The recording process: Public Friends will offer a recording process that monthly and yearly meetings can use. The process will be available for free on the website. This project is funded by a grant from the Louisville Institute. (2) Mutual support for ministers: This currently includes monthly Zoom meetings for ministers and ways to connect on social media. As Public Friends grows, it will offer affinity groups, mentoring, and spiritual friendships. (3) Matching funds for ministry projects: Public Friends is working to provide matching funds for ministry projects, to raise the level of financial support for ministers within the Religious Society of Friends.
Public Friends supports Quaker ministers of all kinds, not just pastors. The ministry can take many forms, including chaplaincy, pastoral work, traveling ministry, speaking, writing, or working with groups leading workshops or retreats.
Friends World Committee for Consultation (World Office)
In August, around 500 Friends convened in South Africa and online for the FWCC World Plenary Meeting 2024. With representatives from 53 countries and 95 yearly meetings, worship groups, and Quaker organizations, it was a truly diverse gathering. Half of the participants joined virtually, a first-time offering in World Plenary history. An epistle was approved at the end, and is restated in part here:
Friends explored the theme “Living the Spirit of Ubuntu: Responding with hope to God’s call to cherish creation and one another.” Ubuntu is a Zulu word that speaks to the power and ceaseless work of the Holy Spirit between Friends, enabling them to go beyond their individual selves and grasp that “I am because we are.”
Attendees expanded their understanding and appreciation for who Quakers really are. Despite a multitude of differences, attendees celebrated not only their shared Quaker founders, but also deep Friendship, an openness to new biblical interpretations, commitment to peace and justice, love of the Earth, and love of God.
Prior to the gathering, 46 young adult Friends came together for four days of shared conversation, reflection, worship, and song. Living in community, these Friends explored commonalities and differences. A committee of eight young adult Friends from all FWCC sections was formed to keep nurturing this newfound sense of community.
World Quaker Day will be celebrated on October 6, 2024.
Friends World Committee for Consultation (Section of the Americas)
FWCC Americas welcomed a new executive secretary in July. Evan Welkin, from North Pacific Yearly Meeting, will lead the FWCC Americas Section, taking over from Robin Mohr, who served in the role for 13 years. Welkin previously served FWCC’s Europe and Middle East Section and its World Office. During his first weeks of work, he attended the 2024 World Plenary in South Africa.
The theme of the World Plenary was “Living the Spirit of Ubuntu: Responding with hope to God’s call to cherish creation and one another.” That theme was broken down into three content streams: ubuntu and community, care for creation, and repairing historical and ongoing injustice. The epistle and a tapestry document created by the participants can be found at FWCC’s World Office website (fwcc.world).
FWCC Americas also recently hired three other new staff members. Jade Rockwell serves as program director for Quaker Connect (quakerconnect.org), a new thriving congregations program for meetings and churches. Philip Maurer serves as the map data assistant to work on expanding the map of Quaker meetings in the Americas to make it global (fwccdirectory.org). Ana Gabriela Castañeda Aguilera serves as coordinator of the digital Quaker glossary project (quakerglossary.org) and also coordinates new bilingual training services for interpreters who ensure equity in participation for FWCC events.
FWCC Americas will hold its next hybrid Section Meeting on March 20–23, 2025.
Friends Couple Enrichment
Friends Couple Enrichment (FCE) is a ministry to couples who desire deeper intimacy and become beacons of love and intention in the world. Online and in-person workshops and retreats introduce the spiritual practice of “Couple Dialogue,” an experience grounded in the Quaker testimonies of equality, community, integrity, and peace-making. FCE events have supported hundreds of couples over 50-plus years and are open to any committed couple, regardless of marital status, gender identity, or religious affiliation.
Last fall, FCE held its first online growth group in Spanish: Nos-Otros (Us and Others). Started by FCE leaders José M. Gonzalez and Maria Gomez, the monthly gathering draws couples from Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Colombia.
In October 2023, FCE offered an online workshop in which nine couples participated. During the fall, ten couples attended in-person workshops in Durham, N.C. In January, South Seattle (Wash.) Meeting hosted an in-person workshop for seven couples.
FCE continues to offer monthly online drop-in dialogues as well as short, online sessions—known as “Tasters”—four times per year.
In March, FCE leader couples gathered in Pennsylvania for their annual session. The educational focus of this event was discernment of how leader couples view their work in FCE as a ministry.
Tract Association of Friends
The 2023 Friends’ Calendar, with the months and days numbered in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and consistent Quaker practice, will be available on October 15. An order form can be found on the website.
The Tract Association of Friends was founded in 1816 and has been publishing calendars since 1885.
Also available on the website is “Inner Peace and the Right Use of Media: Reflections on Thomas Shillitoe’s Advice,” an essay by Brian Drayton.
Quakers Uniting in Publications
Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP) began informally in 1983 among a group of Friends with a concern for the ministry of the written word. Consisting originally of Quaker publishers and booksellers, QUIP membership now includes authors, editors, publishers—creators of books, articles, and other media—from all over the world.
Over three days in May, nearly 50 Friends from Africa, Belgium, Canada, Russia, the UK, and the United States met online for the QUIP conference, “Celebrating Quaker Writing.” Panels and workshops covered topics including the place and purpose of book reviews, writing for children, book promotion, blogging, and manuscript editing. The virtual gathering also offered author readings from new work, QUIP business (including approval of funds to assist Quaker authors and publishers in countries less affluent than those in which most QUIP members live), and epilogues. All sessions were recorded and are available at QUIP’s website.
QUIP’s mid-year meeting is scheduled for October 22 and will include strategic planning for the future.
Learn more: Quakers Uniting in Publishing
Friends World Committee for Consultation (World Office)
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February, Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) has fundraised for Quaker work supporting refugees in eastern Europe; published church anti-war statements in English, Ukrainian, and Russian for use by the Christian anti-war movement; and joined with more than 140 others in cowriting an interfaith statement against nuclear arms, which was read at the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna, Austria, in June.
The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) has spoken in the name of FWCC at the UN, including calling for an end to the use of explosives in populated areas, for guns to be kept out of the hands of children, and for global investment in peacebuilding financed by an overall reduction in military spending.
There have also been more than 60 Quaker interventions during intergovernmental climate negotiations this year, helping ensure legally significant texts reflect important findings on the environment, climate justice, and human rights.
Dates have been set for the next World Plenary Meeting: August 5–13, 2024, in South Africa and online (FWCC’s first global hybrid event of this scale). Preceding this, celebrations are being planned in many countries for George Fox’s 400th birthday in July 2024.
World Quaker Day 2022 falls on October 2, and is supporting mass online intervisitation with Friends in other countries.
Learn more: Friends World Committee for Consultation (World Office)
Friends World Committee for Consultation (Section of the Americas)
World Quaker Day this year takes place on Sunday, October 2, and Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) took a new approach by asking Quakers to take a personal step toward connecting Friends and crossing cultures by visiting another Quaker meeting or church. It’s easier now to take advantage of the growing number of hybrid options by either visiting in-person or online.
A team of Quaker pastors and leaders in Kenya offers Friends this Bible quote for World Quaker Day celebrations: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14).
“Becoming the Quakers the World Needs” is the theme for both World Quaker Day 2022 and the 2023 Section Meeting.
FWCC Section of the Americas is currently working on two projects to create interactive online tools. The map project will allow Friends to find a Quaker meeting or church anywhere in the world using a smartphone or computer. The Quaker Glossary project will translate Quaker words into many languages and be available to facilitate better communication among Friends via an app.
FWCC is the global fellowship association of the Religious Society of Friends. In the Americas, the Quaker community extends from the Arctic to the Andes, spanning a rich diversity of regional cultures, beliefs, and styles of worship.
Learn more: FWCC (Section of the Americas)
Development
Right Sharing of World Resources
Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR) builds global equity by offering educational opportunities focused on sustainable and just life choices and by partnering with womens’ groups in Guatemala, India, Kenya and Sierra Leone to support group members’ micro-enterprises.
The women’s groups that partner with RSWR name and define their own goals for both their individual businesses and their communities. With support from RSWR country coordinators, these groups often seek to build stronger communities for all, not just those in their group.
In late October, several country coordinators and U.S.-based team members will travel to the East and West coasts of the United States to visit among Friends. RSWR’s social media and emails will contain further details.
In January 2025, RSWR will convene their team in India for a Country Coordinator Consultation. This is an opportunity for the RSWR team to learn from one another and continue to refine RSWR’s programs.
RSWR is transitioning to new leadership, as the outgoing general secretary, Jackie Stillwell, steps down at the end of 2024 after serving for ten years. The new general secretary, Traci Hjelt Sullivan, will begin her term in January 2025 with an opportunity to meet the entire RSWR team in India.
Progresa: Guatemala Friends Scholarship Program
Since 1973, Progresa has provided indigenous Guatemalans scholarships to study in Guatemalan universities.
Half of Guatemala’s population is Mayan, living in the Western Highlands region, which has 37 volcanoes. Many indigenous Mayans are subsistence farmers. Guatemala has the highest GDP in Central America, and, at the same time, the highest rate of poverty in Central America.
Progresa students are speakers of many of the 22 Mayan languages. Those who have graduated return to their communities to serve as engineers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, agronomists, and other professions. This year’s 86 scholarship recipients are studying more than 20 different majors.
Progresa supports students in performing community service projects in addition to their studies. The projects help build students’ resumes.
The program is managed by four Guatemalan staff members, three of whom are university graduates who received help from Progresa. Graduates form lasting networks with their fellow scholarship recipients.
Right Sharing of World Resources
Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR) builds global equity by offering educational opportunities focused on sustainable and just life choices and by partnering with womens’ groups in Guatemala, India, Kenya, and Sierra Leone to support group members’ micro-enterprises.
Key in the administration of RSWR is the work of the country coordinators who support the women’s groups in naming and defining their own goals. RSWR partners often emphasize the goal of sharing and building a stronger community for all.
The RSWR grant program is evolving due to shifting needs in partner communities. To better respond to the changes, RSWR country coordinators will spend more time training individual groups prior to applying for funding and will provide more technical support after women have started their businesses.
RSWR’s new program in Guatemala, started in 2023, trained four groups on group dynamics and self-esteem, as well as financial concepts such as savings, interest, and loans. They will receive intensive training from COOSAJO—a credit union and RSWR’s partner in Guatemala—that will go in depth on how to run a business.
Right Sharing of World Resources
Right Sharing of World Resources (RWSR) offers microgrants to women’s groups in Sierra Leone; Kenya; and Tamil Nadu, India. The women’s groups offer training on small businesses before each woman receives a loan. As the women pay back their loans, with a low rate of interest, the money is kept by the group to loan out to other women.
Following discernment, RSWR has decided to expand into Guatemala as a new partner country. According to the World Bank, the level of poverty in Guatemala is great, at 59.3 percent. There is a strong Quaker presence in Guatemala with some 20,000 Friends. The three yearly meetings and the FWCC coordinator for Latin America (Karen Gregoria) are centered in Chiquimula. Local Quaker women are forming women’s groups and wanting to organize for social action much in the same way when RSWR began partnering with women in Kenya.
General Secretary Jackie Stillwell has been visiting with yearly meetings both in person and online. This summer she gave the plenary online at the Friends General Conference Gathering and attended Ireland Yearly Meeting in person. This fall she will lead “The Power of Enough” workshop online. This workshop asks: How is my use of time, energy, and things in right balance to free me to do God’s work and to contribute to right relationships in our world?
Learn more: Right Sharing of World Resources
Education
Woodbrooke
Woodbrooke, based in Britain, continues to offer an extensive range of courses and research programs, available both online and in-person, along with online meeting for worship held six days a week.
In June, Woodbrooke helped organize the Quaker Studies Research Conference at Lancaster University in Lancashire, England. This three-day, transatlantic event highlighted the latest scholarship in Quaker studies, drawing scholars and participants from across the globe.
In July, prison expert Ben Jarman delivered the Swarthmore Lecture. Drawing from his personal experiences, Jarman explored the myths and realities surrounding society’s response to serious crimes. His thought-provoking lecture encouraged Friends to reflect on renewing their commitment to penal reform. The lecture is available for viewing on the Woodbrooke website and YouTube channel.
In August, Woodbrooke supported Friends participating in the Friends World Committee for Consultation World Plenary, held in South Africa and online. During the Plenary, Woodbrooke conducted a survey to gather information on the diversity and commonality within the global family of Friends. This pilot study marks the initial step toward a larger world survey of Friends.
So far in 2024, Woodbrooke has reached over 1,900 participants through its learning programs, engaging individuals from 42 different countries. Staff members are currently planning programming for the first half of 2025.
The School of the Spirit Ministry
Participating in God’s Power is a year-long program designed to help its participants open deeply and powerfully to the Source, learn how to access clear guidance, encounter and work through internal resistance to faithfully following the direction of the Spirit, and connect this grounding in Quaker practice to their actions in the world. The second cohort will gather for residencies this August and October.
The nine-month Faithful Meetings program brings opportunities to Friends communities for spiritual and emotional intimacy grounded in Quaker faith and practices. Live Oak Meeting in Houston, Tex., completed the program in June. Chattanooga (Tenn.) Meeting held their closing retreat was in September. Facilitator Mary Linda McKinney has space on her calendar for new Friends communities to enroll.
Contemplative retreats are continuing in-person, including gatherings in Racine, Wis., this past April and one scheduled for May 2025.
Friends can apply for a new spiritual formation program that begins in May 2025. The 2025-26 cohort will explore how “God’s Promise Fulfilled” rejects and redeems the damaging logic of our culture’s addiction to domination, injustice, and exploitation. Two day-long previews of the program in November and January will be offered in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., respectively.
Quaker Religious Education Collaborative
Quaker Religious Education Collaborative (QREC) is an international, cross-branch network of Friends promoting lifelong Quaker faith formation. QREC programs bring Friends together in a community of practice to inspire ideas, strategies, hopes, and experiences of faith.
A recent community practice group is focusing on the essential Quaker practices described in the QREC publication Walking in the World as a Friend by Nadine Hoover. During online discussions and practice sessions over three months this fall, participants are exploring specific ways to deepen their faith and practice, using group time to share discoveries on that path. Simple practices from the early Friends naturally reinforce the gathered nature of Quakerism and draw participants away from the individualism of secular culture.
In May, QREC offered online Conversation Circles on welcoming families to Quaker meeting. In August, the organization partnered with the Quaker Leadership Center at Earlham School of Religion to provide an online workshop, with QREC members Melinda Wenner Bradley and Beth Collea, that explored intergenerational community in Quaker meetings, particularly in worship. QREC practitioners consider children fully spiritual beings. They believe that Quaker meetings will find their greatest strength, clarity, and connection with the Divine when all ages are truly integrated and heard in worship and meeting life.
The next QREC conference is scheduled for April 11–13, 2025, at Atlanta (Ga.) Meeting.
Faith & Play Stories
Faith & Play Stories provides a unique resource for Friends meetings and Friends schools to help nurture the spiritual lives of all ages through stories of Quaker faith, practice, and witness.
In September, with the support of a grant from the Thomas H. and Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund, Faith & Play Stories launched a two-year project designed to grow the organization and its reach. The “Finding Ourselves in the Story” project expands the administrative, communications, and development capacity needed to train more storytellers in Quaker meetings and Friends schools, mentor new trainers of storytellers, and publish additional stories. It also supports direct consultation with local meetings to help them reach out to families and include children in multigenerational spiritual communities.
In May, Friends from multiple meetings in New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania attended a “Playing in the Light” training. A second Philadelphia-region training took place in September.
Over the summer Friends shared Faith & Play stories at yearly meeting gatherings as part of children’s and intergenerational programs, as well as at the Quaker Spring gathering at Woolman Hill Retreat Center in Deerfield, Mass. In July, Faith & Play stories were used in a workshop at the Friends General Conference Gathering in Haverford, Pa. In August, ahead of the fall season, a virtual refresher session was hosted for Friends using Faith & Play and Godly Play; the recording is available on YouTube.
Environmental and Ecojustice
Quaker Earthcare Witness
Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) works to nurture a spiritual transformation in people’s relationship with the living world. In responding to critical issues of our time, such as climate change, biodiversity, overpopulation, and depletion of oceans and soil, QEW seeks to instill a hope among Friends that is more powerful than the forces leading to despair.
On the international stage, QEW sent delegations to United Nations negotiations on climate change, hosting two separate UN side events at SB60 in Bonn, Germany, in June and at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in New York City in July. QEW is the sole Quaker organization registered for the next UN Biodiversity Conference (to the Convention on Biological Diversity) to be held in Cali, Colombia, in late October.
General Secretary Keith Runyan launched “QEW on the Road” in May. He visited Friends gatherings from Philadelphia, Pa., to South Africa, conducting over 20 workshops and webinars in two months.
This year, QEW is launching a global Quaker Climate Map (quakerearthcare.org/map), which visualizes the geographic range of all Friends’ efforts to address climate change. This is phase one of QEW’s strategic plan and campaign to build a Quaker climate movement.
Earth Quaker Action Team
Using spiritually grounded nonviolent direct action, Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) challenges corporations to turn away from fossil fuels and toward a livable future.
EQAT continues its work growing the Vanguard S.O.S. campaign, an international effort calling on Vanguard, the world’s largest investor in the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis, to use its power ethically and invest for a livable future.
This summer, EQAT organized a rally and march attended by hundreds of people from across North America at Vanguard’s headquarters in Pennsylvania. Many people attending the Friends General Conference Gathering nearby joined the protest and contributed their spirit. Demonstrators heard from people fighting Vanguard’s harmful investments, such as toxic incinerators and dangerous pipelines in Appalachia and East Africa. Protestors sang while marching, then worshiped in silence at the entrance to Vanguard’s campus. This was the largest climate change protest at Vanguard to date.
This fall, EQAT is supporting groups across the country to hold more Vanguard S.O.S. actions.
The list of customers moving their money and the number of people pledging to not do business with Vanguard until it makes a serious course correction on climate change is growing.
Investment Management
Friends Fiduciary Corporation
In April, Ethan Birchard began as Friends Fiduciary’s new executive director, succeeding Jeffery Perkins, who served in the role for nearly 13 years. A lifelong Quaker, Birchard brings experience in and knowledge of the financial industry, business development, and marketing, as well as strong leadership and management skills.
Friends Fiduciary Corporation (FFC) continues to witness to Quaker values in the companies the firm holds, engaging on environmental, social, and governance issues. During the 2023-2024 proxy season, FFC engaged 40 companies on more than 20 different issue areas.
Friends Fiduciary asks companies to disclose quantitative workforce diversity data and establish inclusive board refreshment policies. The investment corporation also continues to engage pharmaceutical companies on fair drug pricing to promote health equity, and it has urged companies to disclose lobbying and political contributions.
Regarding climate issues, FFC works with other faith-based and institutional investors to hold companies to account on goals such as setting science-based decarbonization targets, developing climate transition plans, and supporting a just transition for workers and communities.
FFC has also continued its work engaging semiconductor companies on greater human rights due diligence of the end use of their products, as they continue to be found in Russian weapons recovered in Ukraine.
In philanthropic news, charitable gift annuity rates are at their highest since 2007, resulting in a spike in giving among Quaker donors.
Retreat, Conference, and Study Centers
Beacon Hill Friends House
Beacon Hill Friends House (BHFH) is a Quaker center and residential community in downtown Boston, Mass., that provides opportunities for personal growth, spiritual deepening, and collective action.
In August, Brent Walsh became the new program and engagement manager. Walsh will nurture connections with residents and alumni, pursue continued outreach to peer organizations, and help expand onsite and online programming options, including the ongoing weekly facilitated spiritual practice program called “MIDWEEK: Experiments in Faithfulness.”
In September, BHFH kicked off a new lecture series called “Making Queer Quaker History,” featuring primary lecturer Brian Blackmore and co-led by Walsh and Jennifer Newman, BHFH’s executive director. The series offers a storytelling tour of Quaker participation in the gay rights movement and how Friends congregations became more open and affirming for LGBTQ+ people during the mid-twentieth century. These stories can serve as guideposts for how Friends can reaffirm their commitment to inclusion and justice for the LGBTQ+ community.
Construction on BHFH’s historic 1805 building continues, repairing and restoring the building’s exterior. The work is funded by a City of Boston Community Preservation grant.
Quaker House at Chautauqua
Quaker House is located on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
The most recent nine-week season ended August 23, 2024. Friends in Residence, Kriss and Gary Miller, filled the house with community, thoughtful conversations, and music.
Each Saturday evening, a simple community meal gave guests an opportunity to connect with one another. Over 216 people attended Sunday worship, many attending a Quaker meeting for the first time. Kriss offered Church of the Wild every Sunday afternoon with Institution support. Over 178 people attended.
Weekly Friends offered two brown-bag talks each week: one about their work in the world, and the other a discussion on how Quakerism intersected the weekly theme. Over 339 people attended these talks.
At Bestor Plaza, the “village green” of the Institution, Gary’s music jams included musicians and handheld instruments for onlookers. Participants in Kriss’s “Knitting Us Together” workshops appreciated her skill as both host and deep listener.
Quaker House also hosted participants from Homeboy Industries, Father Greg Boyle’s gang rehabilitation and re-entry ministry. Quaker House continues its ongoing relationship with the African American House.
This year, rooms were renamed for famous Quakers, and books by the room’s namesake were left in each room. Staff added new artwork to the house depicting influential Quakers such as Benjamin Lay and Bayard Rustin.
Pendle Hill
Pendle Hill, a Quaker study and retreat center located outside Philadelphia, Pa., welcomed 261 sojourners, 97 groups, 1,743 online and in-person program registrants, and 14,899 visits to hybrid meeting for worship between February and July 2024.
Spring began with programs like Beyond Diversity 101 with Niyonu Spann, Clearness Committees with Valerie Brown and John Baird, as well as the 2024 Spring Term. This ten-week resident student program included worship, community work, and learning opportunities such as the Quaker Institute, a four-day workshop on living Quaker testimonies in “the fierce urgency of now,” which gathered nearly 100 Friends to campus.
Season four of Pendle Hill’s podcast The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope launched with new episodes featuring Parker Palmer, Adria Gulizia, Felix Rosado, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, and Valerie Brown, who discussed with host Dwight Dunston what spiritual alignment looks like in this moment of escalating social and political upheaval.
Pendle Hill renovated its historic Upmeads building, a five-bedroom/seven-bed retreat space with attached library, living room, and kitchenette. Since it became available in March, the center has hosted 19 groups and more than 100 guests there.
Pendle Hill also published four new pamphlets as part of its 90-year-long pamphlet series, with original memoirs and essays from John Andrew Gallery, Sue Williams, Rhiannon Grant, and Bridget Moix.
Friends Wilderness Center
Preserved by Quakers for “perpetual spiritual use,” Friends Wilderness Center (FWC) offers restorative peace and tranquility. Since 1974, FWC has provided access to the 1,500-acre Rolling Ridge wilderness area in West Virginia.
2024 marks FWC’s fiftieth anniversary as a retreat center. The year was filled with first-time events that drew new and returning visitors: Lunar New Year at the China Folk House, complete with traditional lion and dragon dances; mushroom log inoculation for shitake, oyster, and lions mane; hands-on herb and medicinal plant workshops; solar eclipse picnic; miniature goat hiking; and a sacred chant and dance circle.
Events celebrating the 400th birthday of George Fox in July included a potluck, songs and poetry shared under the night sky, and campfire open-mic nights.
Repeat programs included: forest therapy; art in nature; wildflower walks; birding tours; salamander encounters; meteor shower viewings; and a summer solstice night hike. Volunteers renovated the treehouse, FWC’s original structure.
First Day worship in the wilderness welcomes attenders into the Light under the canopy of a sugar maple on the meadow overlooking the upper pond. Messages are gratefully received from all gathered: frogs, cicadas, dragonflies, birds, dogs, goats.
At 50, FWC is energized to explore innovative and inspiring ways to share the gift of nature to help heal and restore individuals, communities, and the natural world.
Friends Center
Friends Center’s newest office tenant is Joyful Readers, a nonprofit that trains reading tutors for Philadelphia public school students. The addition of this tenant brings the building’s vacancy rate to less than 5 percent.
Among recent events onsite were Jewish Voice for Peace membership meetings to respond to Israel’s war in Gaza; and a talk by Emily Provance, from Fifteenth Street Meeting in New York City, on preventing election violence presented to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Friends.
Friends Center recently completed a “discovery study” with Partners for Sacred Places, a national nonprofit that brings people together to find creative ways to maintain and make the most of America’s older and historic houses of worship. The Friends Center complex includes the Race Street Meetinghouse, built in 1856.
The study assessed goals and strategies of Friends Center’s three equity partners—American Friends Service Committee, Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—and how they relate to one another and to Friends Center.
The study will provide guidance to Friends Center following the significant changes made to both the campus and the nature of office work in the last four years. As the partners and Friends Center’s 25 nonprofit office tenants continue to adapt their office space for remote and hybrid work, the study will help inform Friends Center’s policies, programs, and physical plant in the next few years.
Ben Lomond Quaker Center
Ben Lomond Quaker Center, located on over 80 acres in Ben Lomond, Calif., offers programs and retreats in line with Friends testimonies. Quaker Center strives to live in right order with all creation, especially the redwood forest where it sits in the Santa Cruz mountains. Founded in 1949, the center is celebrating 75 years.
Since its beginning, the center has offered overnight summer camps for children and young people to live among the redwoods, collaborating in recent years with Pacific Yearly Meeting’s youth programs. This year there were two weeklong camp sessions instead of one.
The first session was for younger campers (rising fifth–seventh graders), while the following week was a teen service camp for older campers (rising eighth–tenth graders). Camp staff and counselors are composed almost entirely of former campers. Beloved activities like campfires, swimming, and night hikes are combined with daily silence, group decision making, and worship sharing.
A family workcamp is held later in the summer. This year it brought over 100 people to work on improvements to the campus and facilities, and spend a week together in celebration and fellowship.
To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary, Quaker Center hosted a series of events and celebrations August 30–September 2, including a workcamp, meeting for worship in the redwood circle followed by a potluck and rededication ceremony, and an open house and birthday party.
Whanganui Educational Settlement Trust
The Quaker Settlement is a Quaker intentional community situated on the northern outskirts of Whanganui, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The 20-acre site is owned by the Whanganui Educational Settlement Trust (WEST), a Quaker trust set up in 1975, and comprises 17 homes surrounding a residential seminar center that can accommodate up to 40 people, serving the needs of New Zealand Quakers and other groups.
There is no individual ownership of land: tenure is therefore “guardianship,” communal facilities kept up by people living in the encircling houses. Residents share all management responsibilities and work cooperatively using spiritually discerned decision-making.
Weekend seminars organized by New Zealand Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Learning and Spiritual Development Committee occur throughout the year and can be found on the website.
Seminars and events in 2023 included an intergenerational weekend focused on ways to reach out to young families and seekers of all ages; an autumn work weekend to complete maintenance jobs at the settlement; a Quaker men’s gathering; a WEST board meeting; a seminar exploring the word worship with facilitators who asked participants to consider what worship means to them individually and to all Friends; and a Rainbow Weekend for LGBTQ+ Friends and Friends who are curious about their sexual and gender identity and orientation.
Silver Wattle Quaker Centre
Established in 2009, Silver Wattle Quaker Centre is located on a 1,000-hectare (2,500-acre) property in Bungendore, Australia. Grounded in Quaker tradition, the center offers social and religious education in addition to support and preparation for witness and service.
The property is home to many species, including wombats, wedge tail eagles, black swans, shingleback lizards, and kangaroos. Hundreds of trees are planted each year. The focus this year is on sheoaks to provide habitat for black cockatoos. Chickens have been reintroduced to the orchard, which includes quince, nectarine, peach, plum, and fig trees.
New center coordinators Emily Chapman-Searle and Yarrow Goodley, both hired in early 2023, offer hospitality to all who stay at Silver Wattle, whether on personal retreats, group venue hires, or attending courses.
Founding member David Johnson retired as clerk of the board, but continues to offer courses on early Friends and contemplative practice. The first cohort of a year-long spiritual formation course, Food for the Soul, completed their program last June; it will run again in 2025.
The Quaker Basics online course was offered again in March. Further course offerings are listed on the website.
Quaker House at Chautauqua
Quaker House is located on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
For the upcoming 2024 summer season, Kriss and Gary Miller will return for their third year as the Friends in Residence team. Here are some highlights from last year.
Each Saturday evening, Kriss offered a simple community meal, giving new guests an opportunity to connect. Over 243 people attended Sunday worship during the season, many attending a Quaker meeting for the first time. Inspired by a Chautauqua presentation last year, Kriss also offered Church of the Wild every Sunday afternoon with Institution support. Over 163 people attended.
Weekly Friends offered brown-bag talks; one about their work in the world, and the other a discussion about how Quakerism intersected the weekly theme. Over 325 people attended these talks.
At Bestor Plaza, the “village green” of the Institution, Gary’s music jams included musicians and handheld instruments for onlookers. Participants in Kriss’s “Mindfulness and Mending” workshops appreciated her skill as both host and deep listener.
Quaker House also hosted participants from Homeboy Industries, and continues its ongoing relationship with the African American House. More than 100 people attended a screening of a video about the founder of Homeboy Industries, Father Greg Boyle.
Powell House
Elsie K. Powell House, located in Old Chatham, N.Y., hosted a fall work weekend during which volunteers cut up a very large dead tree into firewood despite rainy weather. On December 30, 2023–January 1, 2024, Families gathered for the house’s New Year’s Eve celebration for the first time since the beginning of 2020.
In the youth program, conferences have centered around themes of integrity, simplicity, gender exploration, creativity, and conflict resolution. Groups that have used Powell House include the Alliance of Families for Justice, New York Yearly Meeting Young Adult Friends, and the Alternatives to Violence Project.
Other highlights in programming include the annual Winter Solstice celebration; Friends decision-making and clerking; and Dwelling Deep, a yearly silent retreat. Powell House Bible Study has continued to meet online. The capital campaign has continued to raise funds for renovations that will improve energy efficiency and accessibility as well as establish an endowment.
Service and Peace Work
Youth Service Opportunities Project
Founded in 1983 at a community service conference in New York, Youth Service Opportunities Project (YSOP) is a Quaker nonprofit inspired by the international workcamp movement that began in the 1920s. YSOP programs are nonsectarian, emphasize service learning, and have focused on various issues over the years, including refugee aid work as well as housing and food insecurity.
The YSOP Connex program brings students and seniors together in small groups to connect, converse, and learn through virtual conversations and in-person service projects as well.
In May and June, Connex hosted a three-session in-person program for women, girls, and female-identifying individuals with Mary McDowell Friends School in Brooklyn, N.Y. The students made no-sew blankets and homemade cards for youth at the Boys and Girls Club in New Rochelle, N.Y. This program with Mary McDowell Friends School will run again in the fall.
Quaker Voluntary Service
Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS) is an experiment at the intersection of transformational spirituality and activism through fellowship programs for young adults.
In August, 20 young people joined QVS, committing to a year of service. National orientation took place at Pendle Hill, a Quaker study and retreat center outside of Philadelphia, Pa. QVS partnered with 15 organizations in four U.S. cities to offer site placements for the Fellows. For the first time QVS partnered with a for-profit organization: a solar energy company in Minneapolis, Minn., called Cooperative Energy Futures.
This spring, QVS hosted an alumni reunion at Pendle Hill. It was an opportunity for alumni from different years and houses to explore spiritual community in a new era of their lives.
This summer, QVS staff supported Executive Director Hilary Burgin in taking a sabbatical after a decade of service. Everything went smoothly and members of the QVS community missed Burgin’s discernment, executive functioning, and sense of humor.
A five-week summer program for young adults aged 18–20 is under development for 2025 in Philadelphia. QVS has secured a grant for this project, which is headed by Rachael Carter, QVS’s Philadelphia coordinator. The hope is to give young people the opportunity to try different types of service and volunteer opportunities coupled with the community and spiritual seeking that QVS is known for.
Friends Peace Teams
Friends Peace Teams (FPT) is a Spirit-led organization that creates spaces for truth-telling, dialogue, healing, and nonviolent action for justice in 20 countries. In regional teams on five continents, people of many different faiths, ethnicities, and cultures work together to create enduring cultures of peace.
The Europe regional team builds skills among justice and peace workers in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and Iraq through holding Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops and offering psycho-social support to people displaced by war.
In five Latin American countries with persistent inequalities and violence, Peacebuilding en las Américas conducts AVP and Power of Goodness workshops to support families and individuals in crisis.
In the African Great Lakes region, FPT has programs for healing ethnic divisions and trauma for refugees from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Programs also support economic empowerment, women’s health, and education for English literacy and agriculture.
The Asia–West Pacific team continues eco-conscious AVP and Power of Goodness workshops, and programs that support displaced persons from Myanmar (Burma) and build eco-justice projects in the Philippines and Korea.
In North America, the team amplifies Indigenous voices and advocates for land return and healing from genocide, colonization, and forced assimilation, including harms caused by the Quaker Indian Boarding Schools.
FPT will host an online gathering November 13–16 that will be open to the public.
Canadian Friends Service Committee
In 2019 after Canadian Friends Service Committee’s book Are We Done Fighting? Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division by Matthew Legge came out, Psychology Today offered the organization a blog on its site. Legge, a CFSC staff member, continues to blog for PsychologyToday.com, sharing success stories from social justice work and practical and evidence-based ways to transform conflicts. The latest posts explore conflict strategies, acceptance versus judgment, and surprising research suggesting that people change throughout life much more than they expect to.
CFSC continues to work publicly and behind-the-scenes against the war in Gaza. Together with many partners, the organization is pressing the government of Canada to implement a full two-way arms embargo on Israel, to support the International Criminal Court unequivocally in its decisions, and to otherwise implement Canadian and international law, which would contribute to a just peace.
CFSC has become more active on YouTube in the last year. The group has shared short videos from Indigenous partners explaining what reconciliation means to them as well as videos about alternatives to prisons and the impacts on children when a parent is incarcerated.
American Friends Service Committee
As of September, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has delivered life-saving aid to over one million people in Gaza. To call for an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian aid to Gaza, AFSC is organizing demonstrations and conducting visits with high-ranking officials, including the Pope and White House staff. AFSC is also providing expertise on divestment, offering online meeting for worship with attention to peace every Thursday, and hosting an action hour led by its Palestinian Activism Program every Friday.
In the spring, AFSC offered a webinar series on a variety of migration justice issues, including the processes used for detention and deportation, border policies, and how to discuss migrants’ experiences with friends and family. AFSC’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program has been at the border nearly every day for the past year, helping migrants trapped without access to basic supplies. The organization is also mobilizing supporters to advocate to the Biden Administration to rescind the June executive order severely restricting migrants’ access to asylum claims.
In July, AFSC launched a No Hunger Summer campaign in response to the failure of 11 states to responsibly administer SUN Bucks funding intended to provide food for low-income families when school is not in session. The organization is connecting Friends and community partners to encourage state governors to distribute federal funding to feed kids.
Youth Service Opportunities Project
Founded in 1983 at a community service conference in New York, Youth Service Opportunities Project (YSOP) is a Quaker nonprofit inspired by the international workcamp movement that began in the 1920s. YSOP programs are nonsectarian, emphasize service learning, and have focused on various issues over the years, including refugee aid work and housing and food insecurity.
Launched in 2020 during the pandemic, the YSOP Connex program brings students and seniors together in small groups to connect, converse, and learn through virtual conversations, and as of 2022, in-person service projects as well.
Connex ran several programs with Iona Preparatory School in fall 2023 at Purchase Meeting in West Harrison, N.Y. Several more programs ran in February and March 2024. High school students and senior citizens got to know one another and experienced new perspectives. Also in February and March, Connex hosted both virtual and in-person programming for women and girls with the Mary McDowell Friends School in Brooklyn, N.Y.
There were also several in-person service projects for seniors and high school students in Pelham, N.Y., and middle school students in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Volunteers worked together to make blankets for area families in need.
Quaker Voluntary Service
In response to a survey of young people and the changing tides of service programs, the Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS) board has decided on programmatic changes. Starting with the 2024-25 QVS year, the program will shorten from 11 months to 9.5 months, similar to a school-year schedule. This will allow Fellows to pursue summer employment and scholarship opportunities. A wider scope of site placements was requested, particularly for people interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
QVS will also be piloting three additional cohorts: In 2025, it plans to institute a short summer program for teenagers and a multi-week summer program for college students; the latter is in development and will take place in Philadelphia, Pa. In the 2024-25 program year, QVS will launch the Boston Angelic Troublemakers (BAT). The BAT pilot cohort is specifically designed for changemakers in Boston, Mass., acknowledging the unique challenges and burnout that can come with dedicated movement work. This cohort integrates Quaker traditions with earth-based practices.
While QVS chose to pause the program in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minn., for one year, local enthusiasm for QVS kept the possibility open for a return to the Twin Cities. After reviewing the budget and organizational goals, the board of directors felt clear to reopen the Minneapolis–St. Paul program for fall 2024.
Quaker House of Fayetteville
Quaker House, based in Fayetteville, N.C., offers counseling and support to members of the armed forces questioning their role in the military; it educates them, their families, and the public about military-related issues; and it advocates for a peaceful world.
The war in Ukraine, attacks in the Middle East, and continued partisanship in the United States challenge military participants, their families, and veterans. The shrinking military and failure to meet recruiting numbers are increasing the stress on those who are joining the military. Quaker House seeks to help members resist the pressure to recruit while addressing the pressure to continue military participation.
Sexual assault in the military continues to be a troubling issue, with recent efforts focused on prevention, including the SHARP program (Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention) instituted in 2008. But even so, the U.S. military saw a 1 percent increase in sexual assaults in 2022, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report, released in September 2023. In December, Quaker House participated in an event at nearby Fort Liberty that connected military leadership, Victim Advocates, and SARCs (sexual assault response coordinators) with community organizations and agencies that can assist with resources for victims. Quaker House is one of those organizations, providing trauma counseling services to civilian victims of soldier sexual assault.
Friends Peace Teams
Friends Peace Teams (FPT) is a Spirit-led organization that creates spaces for truth-telling, dialogue, healing, and nonviolent action for justice in 20 countries. In five regional teams, people of many different faiths, ethnicities, and cultures work together to create enduring cultures of peace. Here are some recent updates from each of them.
The Europe regional team offered Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops to peace workers and psycho-social support to people displaced by war in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and Iraq.
In five Latin American countries with persistent inequalities and violence, Peacebuilding en las Américas conducted AVP workshops and other activities to support families and individuals in crisis.
In the African Great Lakes region, FPT members offered trauma healing programs for refugees from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The team also supports economic empowerment, women’s health, and education for English literacy and agriculture.
The Asia–West Pacific team recently developed new programs to support displaced persons from Myanmar (Burma) and build eco-justice projects in the Philippines and Korea.
In North America, FPT lifted up Indigenous voices and advocates for land return and healing from genocide, colonization, and forced assimilation, including harms caused by the Quaker Indian boarding schools.
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