Latest News
Northern Young Friends gather
More than fifty young people gathered at Ackworth School between 26 July and 4 August, for the Northern Young Friends Summer Shindig. They had travelled there from Scotland, the north of England, and Ramallah, Palestine. Hexham Meeting made it possible for Marwa Afaneh of Friends School, Ramallah to attend.
Welsh peace vigil condemns NATO event
Friends from Caerleon, Newport Meeting staged a peace vigil on 17 August, to protest against next month’s NATO summit. This will take place at Newport’s Celtic Manor Resort on 4 and 5 September.
Friends join scarf protest
Several hundred protesters were on hand last Saturday, 9 August, for the unfurling of an enormous pink scarf along the seven miles of road between the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield. The protest was intended to show the scale of opposition to Trident replacement in the UK...
Quakers call for action on Gaza
Against a backdrop of broken ceasefires and with almost 2,000 people dead, Quakers in Britain have released a statement calling for urgent action on Gaza. The Religious Society of Friends in Britain has urged the UK government to recognise Palestine as a nation state, stressing that 134 countries have already recognised the...
Commemoration events
Bearing light in commemoration The second full day of Yearly Meeting Gathering coincided with the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of world war one. Friends were able to mark 4 August in a number of ways. Light and darkness were at the heart of a very simple, creative and moving...
Special interest groups
Disability group concerns The Quaker Disability Equality Group (QDEG) held its annual general meeting (AGM) on Sunday 3 August. Afterwards, participants were asked what they wanted from their group. Some two dozen people were present. Suggestions were wide-ranging, but the key message was that QDEG and its work need to be...
As we are one in Christ, and can never be at war…
While 4 August will be the centenary of the outbreak of first world war, it is less known that it is also a significant centenary in the history of peace. On 4 August 1914, on the platform of Cologne station, Henry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Sigmund-Schulze, a German Lutheran pastor, made...
Liverpool Friends open café
Friends in Liverpool have just launched a new project that will help Quaker outreach in the city. The Quaker Meeting house café is a collaboration with local charity Blackburne House. Its menu is vegetarian, with an emphasis on fresh, seasonal food.
Hlekweni closes – Friends of Hlekweni continue
Hlekweni Friends Rural Service Centre (near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) has closed. The centre was founded forty-seven years ago, but is no longer financially sustainable. Thousands of young Zimbabweans owe their livelihoods to the training they had there. The last students graduated in mid June.
White Feather Diaries go live
The white feather diaries website will go live on 4 August at Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) 2014 in Bath. Quaker writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Durham will read extracts from the diaries at the launch event.