At the 2018 Annual Sessions this year, there will be a booth during free time and dinner time on Thursday and Friday where Resource Friends will be available to talk with you about their work and what they might be able to support for you and your meeting. They will also be offering workshops on Friday and Saturday. Resource Friends help our community thrive by providing support in specific areas of concern in our monthly and quarterly meetings. They offer a diversity of gifts and an extensive “how-to” knowledge-base. [Read more…] about Resource Friends at Annual Sessions!
Climate Justice
Friends inspired by NY Friend Sandra Steingraber speak out against Pipelines and in favor of Clean Energy
Members and attenders of Westtown and other Monthly Meetings joined several hundred in West Chester on June 9th to publicly witness on behalf of our neighbors facing the dangers of new pipelines snaking their way through Chester and Delaware counties designed to carry high risk liquefied gas pipelines. The Mariner East Rally for Community Safety speakers painted a grim picture of the threat to families, schools and local businesses. Quaker activist Sandra Steingraber came from NY to lend us encouragement. She and other Friends in NY State led a multi-year civil disobedience effort to protect the water resources provided by Seneca Lake. Many of us first heard of Sandra and we were inspired by her letter Why I am in Jail. Others of us had read her compelling book Living Downstream. In the evening, we attended the Pennsylvania premier of the film Unfractured depicting this struggle and the hard work that she and others undertook which finally led to the ban on fracking in New York State. Her message was clear – as people of faith, we all need to find our courage and determine what role we can play in choosing life giving energy over fossil fuels, given what we know about their short and long term impact on human and environmental health. She herself had to overcome her own preference to stick to research as an approach to change, as she is by nature more of an introvert. To learn more about the pipeline movement and which Monthly Meetings are in or near the blast zone visit the Middletown Coalition for Community Safety.
Kwel’ Hoy: We Draw The Line!
Quaker Seeds and Native American Corn
Seventy-five F(f)riends gathered for worship at Schuylkill Meeting—a beautiful and active Friends meeting near Phoenixville—followed by a Friends in Fellowship event at Eden Valley Farm on Sunday, February 25th. As the Spirit moved among them in worship, and the warmth of John and Penny Hunt’s welcome sunk in, Friends who had come from as far away as Third Haven Meeting, MD, and Harrisburg Meeting, PA, enjoyed the chance to connect around farming, biodiversity, the extensive seed collection of Roughwood Seeds, and Native American corn collected by 21 year-old Stephen Smith, who is part Cherokee. [Read more…] about Quaker Seeds and Native American Corn
Op-ed from Friends Fiduciary Published in the Philadelphia Business Journal
Jeffery Perkins, Executive Director of Friends Fiduciary wrote an op-ed —Fix to Solar Credit Will Boost State’s Economy — published in the Philadelphia Business Journal supporting the implementation of Pennsylvania’s Solar Energy Credit legislation, which would eliminate the loophole allowing utilities to satisfy clean energy requirements out of state. [Read more…] about Op-ed from Friends Fiduciary Published in the Philadelphia Business Journal