Young Friends

Present: Jim Green, Thomas Watts, Hana Newport

The meeting opened in silence at 5pm.

1. 350.org:

a. Climate change is a concern we as a group have felt strongly about for some time and we see that the 350.org project is a broad and inclusive campaign. We agree to make a donation of $500, and ask our treasurer to make this donation.

b. We feel that time and action are as essential as money, and as such encourage regional groups of Young Friends to take part in the day of action on 24th October.

c. Kapiti meeting has asked us if we plan anything for the day of action, and if we have ideas of action that may be taken in the Kapiti area. We are not aware of any events in Kapiti, but many of us hope to take part in events that will be taking place in the centres, such as Wellington. We note that the 350.org website has a helpful section called ‘Action Ideas’ if Kapiti friends want to organise a local event.

2. Kapiti donation

We thank Kapiti meeting for their recent generous financial donation to Young Friends meeting. We are happy to share common concerns with Kapiti Friends.

3. Yearly Meeting nominations

We support the nominations for the following positions:

i) Marvin Hubbard as Representative to Christian World Service for the annual meeting June 2010

ii) Mary Rose as Representative to Australia YM, January 2010. We note Mary Rose’s determination to seek alternative to air travel and support her concern.

iii) Bridget McKendry as Website Manager (from now till Dec 2012, renewable). We are pleased with the website developments planned by Bridget McKendry.

4. Quaker Lecture – Call for Suggestions

The 2010 Quaker Lecture organising committee has to select a lecturer within the next two months. The immediate requirement is for ideas and suggestions, and the more the better. If you have any thoughts on possible topics and speakers, please send them to David Elms at elmsnorris@xtra.co.nz before the middle of September. All contributions would be very welcome.

5. Skype turnout

We are very aware of the small turnout to this meeting, so Thomas and Hana will make an effort to remind people about the meeting via telephone and text message as well as the usual group email.

The meeting closed in silence at 5.50pm.

Present: Jonathon Tailby, Thomas Watts, Kate Peirse-O’Byrn, Thomas Owen, Hana Newport

1. We agree to nominate Joe Beautrais as our representative to attend the 2009-10 Australian Young Friends Camp and Australia Yearly Meeting in Adelaide.

2. We agree to appoint Joanne Hall as Assistant Clerk.

3. With regards to the nomination for the WEST board, we are going to investigate the possibility of having the role shared between Joe Beautrais and Rogan Boyle.

4. We note that Australian YF’s are preparing the Backhouse Lecture for Australia Yearly Meeting 2010 in Adelaide.

As such, we would like to investigate the possibility of getting the Australian Young Friends to provide an electronic version of the Backhouse Lecture (either text, audio or visual) so that we can share in this special event.

We are also considering investigating whether it is possible to source additional funding to help some Young Friends attend this special event, and invite thoughts or expressions of interest from Young Friends.

5. We note that Young Friends are scheduled to make a presentation at Yearly Meeting 2009 on the Saturday. Hana Newport and Kate Peirse-O’Byrn will begin the process of preparing a presentation, to be completed at YM.

During YF camp 2009 on Waiheke, Young Friends recorded a 23 minute radio show for Waiheke community radio.

To Friends everywhere,

Young Friends of Aotearoa/New Zealand gathered at Friends House on Waiheke Island over Easter for our annual camp. Waiheke Island was the ideal place to come together under the camps theme of Home, Land and Sea with the space to explore our relationships with these fundamental elements of nature.

We were introduced to the land on Waiheke by Jim Burdett and Jane Briscoe, Sue Stover and Robin Watts, and Fiona Gregory who shared with us the history of Friends House and how it was brought into being. This story helped us to appreciate the success of the building and the volunteer work that persevered throughout its construction. We felt that through the service we undertook during our stay we also became part of this legacy and look forward to continuing our involvement with this very special place. This theme also emerged in shared ministry at the Sunday meeting for worship, where people felt moved by the connections to past meetings. It was a spiritual highpoint sharing this meeting of past and future with the local Quakers.

One of the main themes to come through was the notion of ‘place’ as we discussed the position of Quakers within the wider religious world, with Bill Robinson providing an introduction into the problems and benefits of the Ecumenical movement in New Zealand. The place of Quakers in New Zealand in relation to the rest of the Quaker world was explored through Joanne Hall and Thomas Watts reporting back of their thoughts, experiences and insights into the FWCC AWPS Gathering and Young Friends Camp in Bhopal, India. We also managed some outreach with the creation of a 23 minute radio documentary for Waiheke local radio. This documentary is also now the official home of the ‘Quaker Pirate Radio Rap’.

The atmosphere at the camp was relaxed, with swims at the beach at all times of the day and night, sea kayaking, eating fresh fish caught from sea kayaks, boating with Don McGlashan, not to mention the deep and insightful conversations, the music and the laughter. The camp provided a space of calm and revitalisation, away from the business of our everyday lives. This was summed up quite aptly by Chris Hall whilst reflecting on his experiences at Australia Yearly Meeting and Young Friends Camp when he said ‘when you’re at a Quaker gathering, everything seems to make sense’.

Looking back on the theme, it seems Waiheke provided us with land and sea, whilst Friends House Waiheke and the people within provided us with a spiritual home.

Present: Suzanna Remmerswaal, Thomas Watts, Hana Newport

1. The YF Nominations Committee has nominated Thomas Owen and Thomas Watts to join the nominations committee, replacing Chris Jacques and Mirjam Guesgen. We approve these nominations.

The meeting closed in silence.

Present: Thomas Watts, Jimmy Green, Thomas Owen, Dominic Remmerswaal, Chris Hall, Jo Hall, Hana Newport, Ria Pugmire, Ross Hebden, Daniel Burton, Jo Bradley, James Bradley, Elissa Thomas, Jesse Watts, Johnny Fersterer-Gawith, Josef Beautrais, Kate Peirse-O’Byrne, Margot Burton, Rogan Boyle, Simone Burton, Suzanna Remmerswaal, Sam Gregory, Fran Gleisner

1. We welcomed everybody to YF Camp 09, in particular people new to YF camp.

2. The following people have agreed to write the epistle for the camp:

Fran Gleisner, Kate Peirse-O’Byrne, Ria Pugmire, Suzanna Remmerswaal, and Johnny Fersterer-Gawith

3. Chris Hall reported back to the group about his thoughts and experiences at Australian YF Camp and YM.

4. a. The following people have been nominated to attend Australian YF Camp and YM in 2009-10:

Ria Pugmire, Margot Burton, Suzanna Remmerswaal, Rogan Boyle, Jo Bradley, Daniel Burton, Joe Beautrais,

b. Chris Jacques and Mirjam Guesgen have finished their terms on the YF Nomination Committee. Sarah Tailby and Suzanna Remmerswaal will continue their term for another year. Two new YFs are needed for this committee. The following people have been nominated to fill these roles:

Thomas Watts, Thomas Owen, Ria Pugmire

c. Thomas Watts is stepping down from his ANZYFM role of Clerk. We appoint Hana Newport, who has been assistant clerk, to take over clerkship, with mentoring help from Thomas.

d. The following people have been nominated to fill the role of assistant clerk:

Joanne Hall, Jo Bradley

e. Jimmy Green has stepped down from his role representing Young Friends on WEST. The following people have been nominated to fill this role:

Rogan Boyle, Joe Beautrais.

We will continue the process of confirming who will fill these roles after camp.

5. Jimmy Green reported on YF finances. We have plenty of money, due to camp surplus, fundraising and gifts. We hope to use this extra money for future Young Friend international connections, including helping YFs who are going to prepare for the event. For example, this may be language classes. We are also open to supporting projects which pursue our concerns. We acknowledged the issue around investing for profit, and how this can be reconciled with our concern for sustainability and limiting economic growth. We hope to discuss this more and find clarity.

6. We note that Yearly Meeting 09 will be held in Wellington, 9th - 12th July at Scots College.

a. We encourage Young Friends to attend YM.

b. We offer our help to the organisers of YM with tasks during the centennial celebrations

7. Christchurch YFs have indicated that they will be able to organize YF Camp 2010, possibly to be held at Journey’s End. The following people have offered to help organise the camp:

Suzanna Remmerswaal, Jimmy Green, Johnny Ferster-Gawith, Thomas Watts, Ria Pugmire

8. Summer Gathering 2010 will be held in the Hawkes Bay, 28th December - 5th January, at Te Aute Boys College. We encourage Young Friends to attend. Joanne Hall is helping organise, and Hawke’s Bay meeting would welcome help
from other YFs.

9. A number of YF’s are involved with the planning and presentation of a seminar at the Settlement based on some of the ‘Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy’ book over the weekend of the 22nd-24th of May and a strong YF presence there will be beneficial.

Minutes of Young Friends Meeting – Sun 28 September 2008

Present: Thomas Watts (clerk), Char-lien Tailby (co-clerk), Jonathan Tailby, Thomas Owen, Jeremy List & Chris Hall

Meeting opened @ 5.10pm.

Minutes:

1. We have nominated Chris Hall to be our representative attending Australian Young Friends Camp and Australian Yearly Meeting.

2. We have nominated Bridie Zwanikken for a position on the Sexual Harassment, Sexual Abuse Committee for New Zealand Yearly Meeting.

3. We support the marking of the centenary of Yearly Meeting in NZ. We look forward to lending our support to a unified proposal to mark the occasion.
4. We support the concept of an international Quaker voice on environmental sustainability but we are not sure of the best way of achieving this. We feel that there are a number of committees and groups that currently have funding to be an international Quaker voice on issues such as the Quaker Institute for the Future, QUNO, FWCC and AWPS and that those organisations may be able to take this role. We support the Futures Committee speaking loudly internationally on this issue to see if there is room for a new group to be set up or to work with those established groups to achieve the matters brought up in the FWCC 2007 triennial minute on environment and sustainability.

5. We support the idea of Regional Representatives for YFs to advise newly arrived YFs in their regions of the Quaker activities in that region and where appropriate and as the need arises to take initiative and grow the role. We ask Chris Hall to ask for volunteers by emails.

6. We ask the Outreach Co-ordinator to send an email to all YFs in New Zealand at the start of the school year to ask those who have moved or are now moving and those who know those who have moved to notify their new details to the Outreach Co-ordinator.

7. YF Camp will be held over Easter (9th-14th of April) on Waiheke Island. Thomas Watts is chief executive organizer – man on the ground. Thomas Owen is co-ordinator.

Meeting closed with silence at 6.40pm.

Present: Ben Watts, Charlotte Gordon, Char-Lien Lim, Hana Newport, Jimmy Green, Jonathan Tailby, Julian Carver, Thomas Owen, Thomas Watts.

1. The meeting opened with silence.
2. Hana Newport has had her name put forward for the role of YF co-clerk by the YF Nominations Committee. We confirm Hana’s nomination to this role. Hana will be overseas from July - December 2008 and we feel she will adequately be able to service the role from there.
3. We put the following names of Young Friends forward for attendance at Yearly Meeting 2008: Ben Watts, Charlotte Gordon, Bridie Zwanikken, Thomas Owen, Hana Newport, Chris Hall.
4. We ask Ben Watts to coordinate preparing a presentation on Aoteoroa NZ Young Friends for Yearly Meeting.
5. In response to the request from Yearly Meeting Nominations Committee “Do appointments made by Young Friends, such as their representative at Australia Yearly Meeting, need to be confirmed by Monthly Meetings, or just reported to them?”. Young Friends feel that for appointments where YFs are the official representatives of New Zealand Friends, and for roles for which Yearly Meeting contributes financially, the process should be as follows:
   • The YF nominations committee will ask for names, and will discern a name to put forward to YF Meeting
   • The nomination will be confirmed through a YF business meeting
   • The name(s) will then be sent to the YM Nominations Committee and the YM Clerk to forward to Monthly Meetings for their consideration and confirmation

   For other roles (such as YF Clerk, Treasurer etc)  Young Friends Meeting will make their own appointments after the manner of a Monthly Meeting.

6. Young Friends Meeting agrees to pay for seminar fees for the Quaker Processes Seminar in July for those Young Friends wishing to attend. We ask that the Wanganui settlement seminar organisers consider contribution towards YF’s travel costs from the appropriate fund.  The following people have indicated they would like to attend the seminar: Thomas Owen, Jo Hall, Ben Watts, Charlotte Gordon, Jonathan Tailby. Young Friends attending will coordinate their travel arrangements to reduce cost and carbon footprint. We will also put forward names for transport assistance for any other YFs wishing to attend.
7. The Settlement’s Seminar Committee has approached Young Friends regarding running or contributing to a seminar at the Settlement in 2009.  Young Friends appreciate this offer and will inquire whether someone within our number feels called to take a leadership role in this.
8. Yearly Meeting Timing - Young Friend’s camp is held annually over Easter weekend. Having YM at this time is likely to make it difficult for many Young Friends to attend. At YF Camp we hold our major business meeting of the year, and this allows YFs to consider and provide a YF perspective on YM matters. Young Friends are physically distributed over the country and our reasons for having YF camp over Easter are similar to those proposed for moving YM to the Easter weekend.
9. The Meeting closed with silence.

To Friends everywhere,

32 Young Friends gathered in Mikimiki 15 minutes north of Masterton, immersing ourselves in each others company, sharing each others dreams and walking in each others light. John Gleisner selflessly lent his home to our community and we have a great deal of admiration for the level of practical environmentally sustainability thought that has gone into the house. We lived under the living roof, inside the straw-bale insulation and over the varnished dirt-floor.

The theme from the camp evolved organically and tended to revolve around global politics with Christina Gibb speaking of her experiences in Palestine, whilst Matt McGrath discussed the United Nations Youth mechanism and also his work regarding cluster bombs. Afterwards, we also discussed the need to look internally at our own communities, to be as patterns in the lives of others and about taking initiatives on a local scale to benefit our understanding of who we are in relation to where we are.

It wouldn’t be a Young Friends camp without some level of recreation and ultimate frisbee, co-operative games of set, uncooperative games of 500, bravely hunting easter eggs and bravely/foolishly ’swimming’ in the river served to provide many lasting memories. The camp was also marked by the inner light escaping, with only 4 Young Friends managing to avoid a virus that swept quite destructively through the camp.

However, Young Friends Camp will be remembered more for the emergence of many new YF’s into the community. These new Friends were welcomed with all of our warmth and happiness, and shared their inner light with all of us in turn. It didn’t take long for everyone, younger and older, to bond deeply and develop strong friendships which are sure to last for many years to come.

We hope to share these connections with you.

On behalf of the Epistle Committee - Thomas Watts, Chris Jaques, Chris Hall, Mirjam Guesgen and Jo Bradley.

YF Business Meeting

24th March 2008

Present: Thomas Watts, Ben Watts, Julian Carver, Jimmy Green, Zoe Fay, Jeremy List, Mirjam Guesgen, Thomas Owen, Dominic Remmerswaal, Chris Hall, Florian Freiburger, Chris Jaques, Jo Hall, Hana Newport, Emily Chapman-Searle, Hannah Chapman-Searle, Ria Pugmire, Ross Hebden, Daniel Burton, Fran Hopkins, Anna Fay, Jo Bradley, James Bradley

1. We welcomed everybody, in particular our international visitors Emily and Hannah Chapman-Searle from Australia and Florian Freiburger from Germany.

2. The following people have agreed to write the epistle for the camp:

• Jo Bradley
• Thomas Watts
• Chris Hall
• Chris Jacques
• Mirjam Guesgen

3. Hana Newport reported back to the group about her thoughts and experiences at Australian YF Camp and YM.

4. The following people have been nominated to attend Australian YF Camp and YM:

• Chris Hall
• Joe Beautrais
• Jeremy List
• Anna Fay

5. Thomas Owen, who is on STAC, reported to the group about what is happening with STAC, in particularly in relation to grants that affect YFs.

6. Our ad-hoc YF nominations committee has recommended the following people to attend the AWP Section Gathering and YF Camp at Bhopal in November: Thomas Watts, Joanne Hall. We accept these nominations as our representatives.

Julian Carver, Thomas Owen and Charlotte Gordon have agreed to co-ordinate a support committee for these people to help prepare them for the gathering.

We also encourage those not attending to help support the organising committee.

7. As we now meet under the structure of Aotearoa New Zealand Young Friends Meeting, we no longer feel the need to have the title of YF Committee to encompass those who hold positions of responsibility within Young Friends. We feel we should refer to these positions as ‘roles’ within ANZYFM.

8. Ben Watts and Julian Carver are stepping down from their ANZYFM roles of Co-Clerk and Communications/YF Camp coordinator respectively.

The following people have been nominated to fill these roles:

• Thomas Owen - Camp coordinator (confirmed by the group)
• Hannah Newport - co-clerk
• Jo Hall - co-clerk
• Jo Bradley - co-clerk
• Chris Hall - possibly either?
• Jeremy List - IT communications type stuff (confirmed by the group)

We will work through the process of confirming who and defining how we will fill these roles after camp.

8. The process for deciding nominations has been discussed and it has been aired that we may in future require a YF nominations committee. This will need to be discussed at the next YF business meeting.

9. YF Camp 2009:
Auckland YF’s have indicated that they will be able to organize YF Camp 2009 likely to be held on Waiheke Island. The following people have offered to help organise the camp:

• Thomas Watts
• Daniel Burton
• Zoe Fay
• Jesse Watts
• Jimmy Green
• Sam Gregory
• Jimmy Green
• Melody Ireland
• James Bradley
• Thomas Owen