Quaker network passes 100 milestone
'The network is now hosting the websites of more than 100 Local Meetings, more than twenty Area Meetings, and ten Recognised Quaker Bodies.'
developed for Quakers has passed its one hundredth-member milestone. The Quaker Meetings Network (QMN) began in December 2019 when around ten websites were unveiled.
The network is now hosting the websites of more than 100 Local Meetings, more than twenty Area Meetings, and ten Recognised Quaker Bodies. There are also more than 650 Quakers with accounts on the network. Quaker groups include: Discovering Quakers, Experiment with Light, Friends Housing Bursary Trust, Quaker Disability Equality Group, Quaker Quest, and Quaker Truth & Integrity Group.
Kealan Fallon, who founded QMN with co-developer Gareth Bevan, told the Friend that some of the challenges the network has faced have been ‘spreading the word; helping Friends to understand who we are and what we do; and growing to accommodate Area Meetings and Quaker Recognised Bodies & Groups, not just Local Meetings. [We’d like] Friends to feel more excited about engaging with the internet for outreach and inreach. Wales and Scotland are doing a fantastic job with their own centralised projects but we’d love to see opportunities to work with them.’
According to Kealan Fallon, the feedback from network-users has been very positive, with those who saw running a website as ‘scary’ saying ‘how fast and easy it was’.
He added: ‘Meetings who have grasped the power of our “intranets” as a place for their local community to gather together… have said especially that their internal communication/ inreach has blossomed.’
Several Meetings have also said they’ve received many more enquiries since adopting their web platform, he said.
The network grew out of the Quaker Website Project Group (QWPG), formed in 2017 to address the perceived need to improve websites of Quaker Meetings in Britain. By 2018, the QWPG had grown to over seventy Friends from around Britain.
