A Young Adult Conference on Ministry, Earthcare and Social Action
Throughout
the spring of 2012 we began asking young adults all over North
America if they wanted to explore revelation, and revolution, through
a six-day intensive training program at Pendle Hill designed for
young adult Friends with an interest in social action and
environmental justice. The answer was a resounding YES!, and thus
Pendle Hill embarked on designing an innovative and powerful new
iteration of the Young Adult Leadership Development program.
Co-sponsored by Quaker Earthcare Witness, the Clarence and Lilly
Pickett Endowment, and Willistown Monthly Meeting, the conference was
held from June 15 – 21, 2012, and through worship, workshops,
games, service, reflection, speakers, musicians, art and fellowship,
dove into the weighty and complex work of creating a more just,
sustainable and spiritually connected world. We are now planning another training program in June 2013: Simplicity – “Be Brought Low, and Back to
the Root”.
The
participants
30
young adults participated in the 2012 Continuing Rev_l_tion program.
Of those 30 participants, the average age was 24 and there were 9 men
and 21 women. We welcomed young adults from Canada, Pennsylvania,
New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, Florida, North
Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and we even had one
participant from Korea. Our participants were exceptionally
passionate about leaning into the intersection of faith and activism,
and the following quotes were excerpted from their applications to
the program:
“I
have a fervent belief that our world has to change drastically…I
would like to find how my faith as a Quaker and my spirituality with
this earth can inform the way I live and walk on our planet.”
“The
future of Quakerism is being and will be defined by the young adults.
I want my activism to be led not just by the philosophy of my faith,
but also by the spirit of it.”
Program
and Activities
Our
six days together were packed with opportunities for personal and
communal growth, and were designed to be an intensive and fast-paced
training-oriented program. In so doing, Pendle Hill established a
new model and framework for young adult gatherings – demonstrating
the power and potential of skill-building and thematically focused
conferences for the younger generations of Friends. Here is a small
snapshot of our activities:
Awakening
the Dreamer Symposium
The
program began with a day-long multi-media training designed to
educate citizens about the biggest problems facing our planet today,
to empower them to move beyond the fear and grief often accompanying
that awakening, and then to inspire them to bring forth an
environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling
world. We welcomed long-time environmental activist, Hollister
Knowlton, former clerk of Quaker Earthcare Witness as the symposium
facilitator.
“Creative Maladjustment,” A Talk
from Steve Chase
Well-known
Quaker scholar and activist, Steve Chase, joined us for several days
of the program. Steve was our keynote speaker, offering a talk
entitled, “Creative Maladjustment: The Prophetic Call of Quaker
Faith and Activism.” Steve is the educational director of the
environmental studies master’s program in Advocacy for Social
Justice and Sustainability at Antioch University of New England.
Steve’s words and presence were energizing and inspiriting for
participants. Steve has continued to stay in touch with all 30
participants through the program’s Facebook group and new book
club!
Evalyn
Parry Concert
For
many, the highlight of the week was the public concert with Evalyn
Parry. Evalyn has
toured music, storytelling, pride, poetry, and theatre festivals
across the continent over the past decade, taking her unique
perspective on the world and transforming it into art that spans
genres, genders, and generations. Much of Evalyn’s music has a
social justice or environmental focus, and she did a phenomenal job
of picking both songs and stories that dovetailed beautifully with
the conference trajectory. Evalyn also stayed on campus as a
sojourner for several days following her performance, allowing our
participants to engage with Evalyn informally and talk with her more
about her own creative process and what it means to her to be an
artist and an activist.
Called
to Action and Campaign Design Workshops
The Called
to Action workshop
with Michael Gagne and Viv Hawkins allowed our participants to
experiment
with bold, spirit-rooted activism,
theories of social change and social movements, group work and the
resistance to change, skill building around nonviolent direct action,
and personal sustainability in seeking to live in Right Relationship.
Building upon Michael and Viv’s workshop, we were later joined by
Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) organizer Zachary Hershman, who led
two workshops about creating
and implementing a successful social action campaigns. Our
participants had the opportunity to practice designing their own
campaigns about issues close to their hearts and their home
communities, and to present them to one another for feedback.
Lobbying
and Legislative Advocacy
Social,
economic and environmental justice requires people working for change
from all sides, and we were fortunate to have Friends Committee on
National Legislation staffer Jose Aguto, Legislative Secretary for
Sustainable Energy and the Environment, join us to lead a workshop on
the ins and outs of legislative advocacy, the policy arena and how to
lobby. Fellow FCNL staff member, and YALD participant, Sandy Robson,
joined Jose and was able to share about her experiences working at
FCNL as a young adult.
Art
for Social Change with Spiral Q
Participants
had the opportunity to get their hands dirty and be creative with
Tracy Broyles, Executive Director of Spiral Q Puppet Theater in
Philadelphia. Spiral Q led a three-hour workshop on the intersection
of art and social change, providing the materials for the young
adults to plan, create and run their own mock demonstrations. Spiral
Q’s work is nationally recognized for its originality, its capacity
to inspire individuals of all ages and backgrounds, and its ability
to creatively revitalize communities throughout Philadelphia.
Discernment
Workshop and Pickett Endowment Panel
Participants
were invited to explore how they felt called or drawn to particular
work, and to listen to how this has come about for them. Using
spiritual discernment tools, participants engaged with one another
through some guided reflection, small group sharing, journaling and
worship. Building upon the exploration of one’s own calling and
path, the Pickett Endowment Board led a panel and large-group
discussion about the nature of leadings and how Quaker organizations
can best serve and support young adults in their work for justice,
peace and sustainability.
Did
we inspire revelation and revolution?
The
program was challenging, energizing, full of laughter and fun,
creative, generative, transformative and packed with opportunities
for participants to go inward for self-reflection and reach out for
help brainstorming about their own personal social justice work and
goals. Here are just a few comments from the evaluations we
received:
“We’re
part of an incredible young adult movement, and if the first
conference was this awesome, I see great things for its future.”
“The
conference tapped into the deep pain and the exhilarating opportunity
that many young adults feel about the daunting tasks that rest upon
this generation's shoulders when it comes to creating a more just and
sustainable world for the future. The group gathered laughed
together, cried together, struggled, debated, sang, worked, planned
social change campaigns.”
“I
felt that our presence was really held and cherished by all the
support of Pendle Hill and our other allies, and can’t thank them
enough for it.”
“It
was good to have a conversation about what it looks like to make
activism a full-time occupation – something I had never really
considered before.”
“Steve
Chase presented such compelling material in such an inviting way. He
helped me internalize and memorize the main things Quakers believe –
A love for the Divine, the other, and the creation. I’ve heard of
the Perfection Standard idea before, but it’s good to hear again
that we can’t let our desire for total and perfect coherency
destroy our chances of accomplishing something smaller but still
good.”
Following
the program, participants brainstormed a list of ways to continue to
build upon what they had begun, how to stay in touch with one
another, and how to serve as ambassadors to other young adults
promoting what they had just experienced. The group formed a private
Facebook, complete with a book club to encourage one another to read
books about important issues from a spiritual grounding. They use
the group to share their individual struggles with activism,
organizing and changing the world.
Every
single participant told us that they would attend another YALD
conference in the future, and more importantly, that they would
recommend it to their friends. With such a powerful confirmation
that the program was meaningful and valuable, we believe we sent 30
young adults back into the world more grounded, more spiritually
whole, and more empowered to “be the change they wish to see in the
world” than how they came to us.
Planning
for the future
The
enthusiasm we felt, the strong call we heard for continuing this
program in the future, and our own excitement around the dynamic work
of planning such cutting-edge young adult programming, all lead us
clearly and unequivocally towards running another training-oriented
YALD program in June 2013. We hope to increase our participant
enrollment and diversity, deepen the content and capacity-generating
focus of the workshops, and build off of our momentum from last
summer. While we are still in the visioning phase for Continuing
Rev_l_tion 2013, we are planning to focus on Simplicity and use the
Quaker testimonies as a lens through which we can examine all the
personal, communal and global implications of living in the world,
not of the world.
We
are seeking program co-sponsors who would be interested in investing
financial resources and programmatic expertise in what has already
proven to be a critical opportunity for us to nurture, energize and
empower the next generation of Friends.
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