The Climate Witness Stewards are under the care of the Administrative Council and established to:
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- Stay current with all aspects of PYM’s climate change and climate justice related actions, statements, and programs from the Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings, and their relevant parts.
- Draw from their own expertise to synthesize that which they learn from PYM’s constituent parts, so they may provide advice, expertise, and recommendations to the Yearly Meeting, and its entities, as needed.
- Hold the yearly meeting accountable to its commitment to a yearly meeting-wide witness on climate change and climate justice.
Learn More
Resource: Creating a Playbook for Climate Action
Climate Witness Stewards Annual Sessions Report 2023
Climate Witness Stewards Biographies
ANDREW ANDERSON, Clerk
JACKIE BONOMO, State College Meeting
PATRICIA FINLEY, Old Haverford Meeting
Patricia Finley, a member of Old Haverford Meeting, a retired academic, has clerked or co-clerked the PYM Eco-Justice Collaborative since 2010 and has been a social justice and anti-war activist for 50 years. Her concern for the environment began in 1968 with Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and her current focus is the Friendly Household Program, which brings the community together to understand and address the systems and policies that drive planet heating, climate injustice, and racism.
Pat is a founding member of Quaker Action Mid-Atlantic, the Friends Ending Gun Violence Collaborative, and is a member of the executive committee of Quaker Earthcare Witness. As a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Climate Witness Steward, Pat has been gathering information from Monthly Meeting environmental justice projects and hopes to create an interactive database as a resource for all the climate work in the yearly meeting. She is forming an ad hoc group to address the carbon footprint of the Yearly Meeting’s transportation carbon costs.
The skills that Pat brings to this work are: community organizing, strategic planning, writing, and communications. Her most compelling concern, in this work, is her belief that spiritual grounding is inherent in our work as Friends, and to this end she strives to make certain all her work communicates reverence and whimsy, in terms of lighthearted playfulness.
RUTH DARLINGTON, Medford Meeting
Ruth Darlington, a member of Medford Monthly Meeting in New Jersey, is active on their Climate Change Group. She also focuses on climate justice as part of our Quaker spiritual journey as a member of the Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting Steering Committee. For more than a decade, Ruth has been a member of the Eco Justice Collaborative (EJC), and she currently serves as co-clerk with Patricia Finley.
In her role as a representative from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) to Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW), Ruth serves as clerk of the QEW FCNL Working Group as well as serving on the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s General Committee. Ruth’s membership on the Climate Change Sprint, which led to the approval of the PYM Climate Witness, is foundational to her work as a climate witness steward (CWS). Moreover, her dual roles as a climate steward and as co-clerk of the Eco Justice Collaborative enhance her service to the Yearly Meeting’s climate witness.
ROBERT L. GREENE, Princeton Meeting
Robert Greene is a member of Princeton Monthly Meeting and serves the Yearly Meeting on its Quaker Life Council and Governance Advisory Committee. He also was clerk of a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting delegation to carry our message urging action on climate change to the Obam Administration on 2009 and clerk of the climate change sprint that produced “Moving Forward in the Face of Climate Change.” He is an attorney whose work has focused on religious and nonprofit organizations.
ERIC MAYER, Westtown Monthly Meeting
For more information, please contact climatestewards@pym.org.
