Quaker Works

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.

• 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 ...
• 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, ...

• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...

• 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 ...
• 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 ...

• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• Arch Street Meeting House Preservation Trust
  Arch Street Meeting House (ASMH) is an 1804 Quaker meetinghouse in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa. After a brief winter hiatus, ASMH reopened to the general public in March. In celebration of the museum’s reopening and the soft launch of its new capital campaign, supporters gathered on April 11 ...

• 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 ...
• 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, ...

• 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 ...

• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...

• 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 ...
• 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. ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...
• 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 ...