Meeting for Sufferings: Publicising the activities of Young Friends
Tim Rouse reported on the activities of young Friends
Tim Rouse, trustee and management officer of Young Friends General Meeting (YFGM), presented a report on the activities of young adult Friends in the past year. YFGM’s main activity is running residential weekends three times a year in Meeting houses around the country. The weekends usually involve between sixty and eighty Friends. The group participates in a joint internship scheme with Britain Yearly Meeting and also appoints representatives to various committees.
‘It’s one of the ways to get a young Friends’ perspective in those meetings, but we hope that you’ll be appointing more young Friends anyway,’ Tim Rouse said, adding that it is important that young Friends participate as individuals who happen to be young rather than as ‘tokens’. This is part of YFGM’s concern to increase younger Friends’ participation in the wider Quaker community.
He asked that Area Meetings consider appointing representatives to YFGM. This would help build closer relationships. He added that Local Meetings could also help with publicising young Friends’ activities. He explained that YFGM’s main corporate concern at the moment is around mental wellbeing.
In the discussion about membership following his presentation Tim Rouse said that some members of YFGM are members of an Area Meeting and others are not. ‘Our relationship with Yearly Meeting allows for membership of YFGM to be as good a way of membership for participation in central committees and other positions as any other: there is a sense that we are a non-geographic community and YFGM is happy with that arrangement.’
Sufferings minuted that it was ‘pleased to know more about the gatherings and work of YFGM and to hear of the thriving spiritual community of young adult Friends which is flourishing and expanding’.
