Latest News
Disinvestment party at St Paul’s
Quakers were among those participating in a ‘disinvestment party’ on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral (see above) on Saturday 25 October. The event was held to celebrate the growing number of churches and faith groups around the world disinvesting from fossil fuels. Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) was the first...
Threat to nonviolence programme
War Resisters’ International (WRI)’s nonviolence programme is at risk of closure due to a funding shortfall. The programme has been training nonviolent movements internationally for a decade. In that time it has developed both know-how and resources, including its Handbook for Nonviolent Campaigns.
Banbury Friends host sustainability forum
Banbury Quakers recently held a forum dedicated to topics such as food waste, biodiversity and the impact of poverty on children. The discussion was held at Banbury and Bicester College on Thursday 9 October. It was intended as an outreach event, designed for those new to sustainability. An eighty-strong audience attended,...
Ethical finance
National Ethical Investment Week has been rebranded as Good Money Week. The newly renamed initiative runs from 19 to 25 October. The UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF), who support the week, hope that the new name will help take the ethical finance message to a wider, more mainstream, audience.
Huddersfield Friends back campaign
Huddersfield Friends are supporting a climate change campaign for a Fossil Free Kirklees. A member of Huddersfield Meeting was involved in the launch and helped to set up the petition. This prompted Quakers to officially back the campaign at Meeting for Worship for Business.
Woodbrooke appointment
The Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham has appointed Simon Best to the position of head of learning. Simon is currently Nurturing Friends and Meetings tutor at Woodbrooke. He will step into his new role on 1 December.
Anti-slavery play performed in Mansfield
The issue of modern day slavery has been raised, in a dramatic form, at Mansfield’s Meeting house. The Plain Quaker theatre project recently staged an updated version of their play Nine Parts a Quaker there.
Quaker school in China marks anniversary
A new school museum has been opened in the Guangyi Friends School in China as part of the school’s 120th anniversary celebrations. The museum opening, on 6 October, launched a programme of events to mark the anniversary of the founding of the school in 1894. The museum traces the school’s...
Quaker schools harness new technology
Online video chat technology has allowed two Quaker schools to join together for the first time in a special Meeting for Worship. Sidcot School in Somerset and Sibford School in Oxfordshire used a Skype link to share their morning Meeting on Friday 10 October.
Norway Friends in peace plea
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Norway have written to new NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, urging his organisation to play a stronger role in peace building. Quakers in Norway stressed the importance of diplomatic channels ‘from first to last in all conflicts’, and asked that the United Nations...