On Saturday, April 12, the three councils that support Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—Quaker Life Council, Administrative Council, and Nominating Council—held their meeting in the joint format. In this structure, all three councils meet together as one Joint Council to worship, discern, and conduct business collaboratively. This allows the Joint Council to share the minutes in a news story with the PYM community in the week following the meeting.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is partnering with The Stone House Group to take an important step in our sustainability journey: measuring our carbon footprint. The consultants will help us gather and analyze data, create a clear report of our current environmental impact, and recommend ways to reduce or eliminate emissions. In our first meeting, we discussed the project’s goals, how we’ll stay in touch throughout the process, and what types of information are needed. The consultants also provided an Excel tool to guide our data collection, focusing on activities from Fiscal Year 2024.
Next, staff will begin reviewing the tool and collecting information from across the organization, including Friends Center, Arch Street, and Operations. John Hayden, an engineer and member of the Climate Witness Stewards Ad Hoc Group, is supporting the team by reviewing and preparing the data. We aim to complete data collection by the end of May or early June. A report on this first phase measuring our carbon footprint-will be shared with the Climate Witness Stewards and Joint Council in July. This work is an important milestone in PYM’s commitment to environmental care and faithful action.
