Meeting for Sufferings: BYM trustees report

Ingrid Greenhow spoke to the report from Britain Yearly Meeting trustees at Meeting for Sufferings

A maximum of £533,000 of legacy funding has been committed to continue support for the Geneva Quaker United Nations Office’s (QUNO) project on Human Impacts of Climate Change, Meeting for Sufferings heard.

Speaking to Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees annual report, Ingrid Greenhow, clerk of BYM trustees, said the new funding was for an additional three-year period from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2020.

She explained that key funding for QUNO, including from Norway Yearly Meeting and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, was coming to an end.

A revised agreement was proposed between BYM and QUNO to allow the latter to approach potential donors in the UK.

Sufferings were also told, on the subject of climate change, that Friends House has been awarded a gold certificate by sustainability consultants Carbon Smart for reducing its carbon footprint by twenty-nine per cent since 2009. ‘It really is a joy’, Ingrid Greenhow said.

She told Sufferings that the Quaker Meeting Houses Project has been successfully completed. For many Friends, she explained, it had been ‘the best project they had ever been involved in’.

The project recorded 345 Meeting houses in the UK and revealed that forty-six per cent of them are now listed. Ingrid Greenhow thanked Friends ‘for all your working collaboratively’, which she described as ‘invaluable’.

Sufferings heard that Scottish advocacy work continues to support ‘peace, truth and equality in the Scottish parliament’ and that BYM would sustain its commitment to support an Edinburgh-based Scottish parliamentary engagement officer.

The Meeting was also told about Quaker Life’s work to address the ageing and declining membership of Quakers.

A Friend from Quaker Life said: ‘There are projects at various stages of development… looking at families, what we can provide for teenagers and older people.’

A Friend from London expressed strong support for ‘a good idea’. But he added: ‘We are largely white, well-educated to degree level, left of centre, middle aged to elderly, and over thirty-five. How are you going to do it?’

A Friend from Cheshire expressed regret that the Leaveners have been laid down, as this will affect many young Friends, and the work of the company over the years was widely praised.

The Quaker Life Friend said: ‘There’s a variety of initiatives kicking off, so watch this space.’

Ingrid Greenhow agreed that younger and more diverse trustees are needed. She said: ‘Everybody will have to change. Everybody will have to adapt. It’s not a pious hope. It’s a real hope.’

A number of Friends thought that ‘more inclusive’ and ‘less opaque’ minutes for Sufferings might be useful.

‘These are not minutes for an external audience,’ said one Friend, and another Friend expressed concern that undue pressure might be put on trustees. She said: ‘In gospel order, the trustees minute what the Spirit moves them to minute at that Meeting… regardless of who is outside.’ She urged Friends not to ‘lay a burden on them in how they minute their Meetings’.

Sufferings, however, agreed that: ‘We can encourage Friends to consider how to communicate their work in a more accessible way.’

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