Friends in Fellowship at Sessions
Our season of compelling Friends in Fellowship lecture events ended this May, but we will be offering seven Fellowship Workshop events this July at Annual Sessions, on July 26, 27 and 28 at the College of New Jersey.
You can attend any of the 30+ Thursday, Friday, or Saturday Workshops at Annual Sessions by signing up as a resident (overnight accommodations) or as a commuter (day trips). Programming is free.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
- A conversation about DNA with Dr. Max Muenke of NIH
- Facility innovation workshop Princeton Meeting and Princeton Friends School
- Teaching for Wholeness Community Connection & Collaboration through American History and Culture, by William Penn Charter School faculty members Lee Payton and Shahidah Kalam Id-din
Friday, July 27, 2018
- Heirloom Vegetable Gardening with William Woys Weaver and Dancing Wolf followed by a book sale at dinner in the Student Center.
- Mentoring Students in High Need Schools, with City Year
Saturday, July 28, 2018
- Climate: From the Paris Accord to You, with Terry Cooke of China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia
- Inclusion in Government, with Don Bell – founder of the Black Talent Initiative at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Policy in Washington DC.
News Report on Friends in Fellowship May Talks
We closed our Spring 2018 Friends in Fellowship lecture series with two “Pop-up Friends in Fellowship” breakfast talks. These events took advantage of noteworthy visitors who’ve been working on important issues of interest to Friends – racial and climate justice. They gathered some 20 Friends for an impromptu hour of conversation at breakfast before the workday began on May 16th and 17th.
Our first Pop-up Breakfast was with Don Bell — who is also coming to Annual Sessions–and whose bi-partisan work on inclusion has been impacting Congressional staffing practices.
The second featured Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) CEO Edward Mungai, with a focus on Kenya’s climate change initiatives. Also joining Edward was Ghanaian neurosurgeon, poet, and musician, Dr. Teddy Totimeh.
Edward introduced KCIC’s entrepreneurial model—and multinational funding—explaining how they have reached more than 10,000 Millennials in Africa, and secured their commitment to take climate change initiatives (like the solar water pump) back to their native villages. Edward emphasized that you cannot address problematic air pollution that comes from daily cooking over wood fires, without convincing householders that lower impact fuels, like natural gas, make the food taste just as good.
Our final scheduled speaker was Dr. Max Muenke of the Human Genome Project at the National Institute of Health. Born in Germany as the son of a canal manager, Max contracted polio as a child. Hospitalized, and immobilized, for almost nine months, Max quickly learned that the most important people on his care team were the support staff who fed him daily. Once he returned home, he brought a deep interest in medicine with him. His work at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia led to DNA projects, which in turn led to the NIH.
Friends in Fellowship Lecture Series begins September 13, 2018
We will be continuing Friends in Fellowship next Fall with events in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Philadelphia.
Malik Neal, co-founder of the Philly Bail Fund will launch the fall series with a talk on Thursday, September 13th at Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting. Malik says: “We started this bail fund not only to help people in the short term but also to push for the end of money bail in Philadelphia.”
Philly Bail fund’s organizers partnered with a Princeton University researcher and other legal and academic experts to ensure that the fund would generate compelling data for replication purposes. Their tagline is — Poverty Should Not Determine Freedom.
Don’t miss this powerful presentation;
save the evening of September 13th and commute to Lehigh Meeting for Malik’s 7:00 talk.
