Friends Environmental Working Group 

1996 Annual Report 

Mission 

With awareness of the spiritual roots of our environmental concerns, and 

believing that a healthy earth is basic to all Friends' Testimonies, we 

work to encourage meetings and individuals within the Yearly Meeting to 

learn about and witness to these concerns. 



Accomplishments related to mission include: 

* An "open meeting" on "Water: The Bad News and the Good News," attended 

by about fifty Friends and friends. 

* Support for the efforts of Friends in NJ to oppose revisions in the 

state's water regulations, a concern which came to Friends' attention at 

the "open meeting." 

* Workshop/discussions at Yearly Meeting, Burlington and Caln Quarterly 

Meetings, 

Newtown and Valley Monthly Meetings, and Wilmington Friends School. 

* A "Day in the NJ Pines" led by Frank Reusch of Barnegat Monthly Meeting 

in which ten Friends participated ( only one EWG member due to others' 

emergency type conflicts) 

* A mailing to monthly meetings to lift up our concern for ecological 

sustainability. 

* Materials distribution at 2 Yearly Meetings, and We Can Do It Day. 

* Communication with FCUN and FCNL 

Other activities include: suggestions to the Structure and Workings 

Committee and to CC2 about 

Pan Committee activities and the budget. 

It should be noted : Four new members have joined EWG this year as 

regular members. Five have 

shifted from regular to adjunct status, a designation we created for those 

who want to be affiliated and informed, who can help in other ways, but who 

cannot attend regular meetings. One has joined as an adjunct member. 

We would have liked: 

* to actively promote the circulation of our PYM Library sets of books on 

environmental concerns among monthly meetings. It was not done this year 

due to lack of person power. One of our new members has agreed to do so 

starting in September. 

* to succeed in getting more of the Friends who express interest in 

joining EWG to attend one of our meetings. 



Major strengths and weaknesses: Our strengths lie in the commitment of a 

few very busy 

individuals to maintain their participation in and support of the group's 

efforts, and in finding greater unity about ways of seeking to fulfill our 

mission. Our weakness is that only one of our members to date has been 

able to make a major time commitment to the work of the group. 

Plans for the coming year: to focus our efforts on lifting up our concern 

for ecological sustainability 

within the Yearly Meeting by: 

* Visits by our members to monthly meetings to share this concern. 

* Holding at least two "open meetings." 

* Co-sponsoring, with Mt Holly Meeting, two Washington Seminars at Wm 

Penn House. 

* Actively encouraging monthly meetings to borrow our books, invite our 

volunteers to lead adult discussions, and promote member participation in 

our "open meetings" and Washington Seminars. 

Hopes for the future: that Yearly Meeting will take up our concern for 

ecological sustainability, that 

new ways will open to act on this concern, and that a few Friends with more 

time to commit that most of our present members can afford will be led to 

join our group. 





Ed Dreby, clerk 



6/25/96