Ujima Friends Peace Center is a Quaker worship community consisting primarily of Friends of African descent. Last year, our Quaker Life Council granted Ujima Friends fifteen thousand dollars to help with their rent and repeated the grant this year. It is the least that could be done to embody the truth that Ujima Friends Peace Center is part of our wider yearly meeting community. A story about Ujima Friends was published on the PYM website.
Members of the Ujima Friends Peace Center are happy to come out and share its “good news” to Friends throughout the PYM area. To arrange for someone to speak to your meeting, please contact Ujima Friends at admin@ujimafriends.org.
- Ujima is excited about how it is growing in terms of attenders applying for membership who have not been a part of the Quaker tradition. What is most exciting is how intergenerational Ujima has become with the growth of young members wanting to be a part of our community.
- The Ujima grocery share continues to serve on average 100 families in the North Philadelphia community each month. We now have added a clothing share as well. What has been especially gratifying is the number of volunteers we have each month, which exposes even more folks to our faith. On average we have 15 to 20 volunteers each month.
- Most exciting, Ujima has partnered with the Sankofa Artisans Circle in a project that includes about 20 women from the wider black community. We are making reusuable menstrual pads to fight period poverty. These reusable pads are environmentally friendly and culturally synchronistic. This effort comes out of our commitment to fight “period” poverty and the violence faced by African girls who are being denied educational opportunities on a monthly basis because of their menstrual periods. Women meet at the Ujima Center on Tuesday, 10:00. Sewing machines for this project were purchased with a grant from Friends Foundation on Aging for another Ujima project.
- Throughout the year, Ujima has been the site of community meetings including being the site for a family mediation, a gathering for Black Quakers across PYM, and several community meetings in partnership with various community organizations.
- This year’s summer Freedom School served 40 young people including children from 5-12, high school students, and college interns. The social action focus this year was raising awareness around lead-based paint and its impact on black and brown children in our city.
- We continue to hold our tenant rights classes each week as we help to fight the violence of homelessness and evictions.
The Spirit continues to move among Ujima Friends. We are continuing to enjoy Her presence and are just trying to remain faithful.
