Amanda Silverman, member of Lansdowne Monthly Meeting, was one of the Philadelphia Inquirer Student Citizenship Award recipients for 2010. Amanda is a senior at Delaware Valley Friends School where she is the Head of Service for her school’s 6-12th grade community. She was selected for this honor based on nominations from high school staff members. Each month, Amanda helps cook and serve meals at the Delaware County Life Center, a human services organization.

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The FCNL Policy Committee has invited us to participate in their priorities process for the next congress. We are asked to identify no more than five main issues for the focus of FCNL's legislative work in 2011 and 2012. As the largest peace lobby in our nation's capital, this invitation gives us a wonderful opportunity to help shape national policy.

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On Thursday, Apr 29th, Zawadi Nikuze will speak at Friends Center about her peace-building work in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Zawadi is a member of the Religious Society of Friends in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She is a young adult Friend, and currently plans and facilitates Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities workshops on trauma healing and reconciliation with citizens of Goma and displaced persons who fled violence to camps outside Goma. Information will also be available about Quaker workcamps there that are open to international participation.

From Jay Worrall: Each year somewhere between forty and forty-five thousand people visit the historic Arch Street Friends Meeting House in Philadelphia. Some are tourists from as far away as China, Papua New Guinea, or Australia; others represent every state in the Union. A respectable proportion are from Philadelphia and the greater bailiwick of PYM who frequently report that, "I have lived in (pick a neighborhood or nearby town) all my life and this is the first time I've been to a Quaker meeting house."

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Frank Lenik of Woodstown Meeting, who has been instrumental in efforts to find and disarm land mines or unexploded ordnance from war zones, is currently in Vietnam getting a hands-on feel for the problem and seeing how the devices are used on the ground. You can read updates from his trip on his blog at the Woodstown Monthly Meeting Website.

Frank will speak about his experiences at the June 13th Salem Quarterly Meeting at Mickleton MM. All are welcome to attend.

For more background on Frank's work, check out the February 2008 Hope Bulletin.

New for 2010: All families seeking PYM tuition aid must apply for tuition aid from their school. This is in addition to submitting PYM tuition aid applications, signed by your Meeting's Clerk, to your Friends school by February 15. (PYM applications, timelines, and guidelines can be found at www.friendseducationfund.org).

We have asked schools to tell us whether each applicant family is eligible for financial aid from the school in a scenario where that family’s effective income was reduced by 20%. If the school reports ‘yes’ then the family has met the need standard for PYM. As a final reminder, in order to apply for PYM aid, families must first apply for tuition assistance from both their Monthly Meeting and their school. If Friends have questions about this, the PYM Education office will be happy to speak with you: Elkem@pym.org or 215-241-7224.