Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Olivia Brangan, Community Engagement Coordinator, and Melinda Wenner Bradley, Youth Religious Life Coordinator, led the community in a Zoom Call on March 31st, 2020. The call briefed everyone on tools for youth virtual community.
Framing Question: How will we nourish the children in meetings and how are we running first day schools under Coronavirus constraints?
Melinda Wenner Bradley (is a member of West Chester Meeting) began by noting that as a parent, and in her work at PYM, she notices that young people are having their own responses to Covid-19. What’s good for a child and good for a teenager, or even two children who are the same age in a meeting, is going to be different. It’s important to begin with an awareness of meeting young people’s different needs, and different ages. Programing should really depend on the needs of a child.
Melinda has assembled and shared some resources for this period of Covid-19. They cover some thoughts on worship, and how to support children’s presence in worship.
Some key points
- It’s best not to make assumptions about how young people are doing. We have to be careful as adults, in terms of pastoral care, not to project onto young people our own anxieties and worries.
- Some children are truly worried and have anxiety around this time; others may not be as aware.
- Being present is really the most important thing we can do; the challenge is how are we present when we can’t be physically together.
- This is a really unique opportunity for us to gather and gather as a multi-generational communities in our meetings, using Zoom. There’s a whole section on that in the document.
- Collaboration between the Pastoral Care committee and Religious Education Committee is important. It a great idea to have these two committees in relationship.
- Keep in mind the rule of three: the means that at no time should an adult and child be one-on-one in spaces alone. If there is one child, there should be two adults, and if there are more than two children, there can be one adult. This applies to virtual spaces, as well as in person.
There is a need to keep in mind several questions, too –
- Do you know what families are up to at home, how they’re doing, if they need anything?
- Do all people have the access to groceries, or time to be able to go grocery shopping with children and work both converging at home?
- Is there other kind of accessibility or support available to families from the meeting (eg: Pastoral care) so the Religious Education Committee doesn’t have to do everything with regard to families in the meeting?
Children’s Wednesday Evening Programs
PYM Youth Programs staff are continuing to do their work and planning ways to support young people with virtual fellowship and worship during this time. Children and Families program staff Kimani Keaton and Crystal Hershey will be doing a Children’s Worship Group at 7:30 each Wednesday evening, for Kindergarten to 5th grade ages.
Registration is on the PYM website. If older children show up as a part of a family, that’s would be no problem at all: ditto for a member of the family younger than Kindergarten. Children love having multiple generations of people together, and parents of really young kids appreciate connecting with each other.
What Meetings are doing, or could do —
- Some Meetings have had art activities that are done at home and then shared through their email list serve.
- Others have instituted phone calls to people in the meeting that have not yet participated in Zoom Meeting for worship (even people who live at a distance).
- Bucks quarter has midweek meeting for worship at a number of different meetings on varied nights.
- The opportunity for children to share artwork while they’re homebound can help children feel more like part of the community.
- It’s good to look for things that young people and families could still be thinking about and doing jointly even when they aren’t physically together. Look for projects that bypass just doing things on screen on a Sunday morning.
- West Chester Meeting has been doing a children’s program for the first half hour before worship on Sunday mornings using Zoom, but they’ve started to think of something that the community could work on together. They were supposed to be planting a tree with the Peace and Social Concerns committee, but that’s not possible until the fall. So each child adopted caring for a tree in their yard or their neighborhood and drew or took a picture of it to share with each other in a couple of weeks.
- Centre Meeting is making confetti paper Easter Eggs in the weeks leading up to Easter. This year, families will take some eggs home, make them with their children, and then hide them in their homes Easter morning. Later, when the distancing restrictions are lifted, they plan to do a delayed Easter celebration.
- One Friend joins a pajama party every night – sharing children’s books online among several people.
- Pendle Hill pamphlets are all online now, and meetings could share one of these before worship – with everyone could bringing their brunch, coffee or tea to the table for connection & worship sharing or reflection.
- Wrightstown Meeting’s religious education coordinator sent out an email to the parents of our younger children, asking if it would be okay if they met during worship online at the same time that regular worship happens. Parents agreed and a Wrightstown Friend’s 10 year-old had a blast connecting with friends that he normally sees during the week on Sundays. During worship the parent was hearing giggles and laughs from the other room; it was really good to overhear their children connecting within their own community.
- Wrightstown’s RE teacher, Kate, is also offering bedtime stories. It has been a super beautiful way to connect with children – to offer to read them a bedtime story via Zoom.
