Last Year in First Day School
Throughout 2009, we have continued to explore the testimonies through story and discussion with an emphasis on finding ways of putting into practice the testimonies of Equality and Service.
From the late spring and through the summer, we engaged in many cooperative hands-on projects, including recycling an old swing-set and rebuilding it; planting and caring for a garden that provided vegetables for members of our community as well as for the Council-On-Aging.
we run to create outreach into the community.
With the help of Dawn Stopka and Steve Tripp, the children have begun to make monthly meals for Market Ministries. We have posted a sign-up for members and attenders of the Meeting to contribute ingredients. This initiative has been successful. The children love participating in the work, and it has been a way of bringing the diverse groups in our meeting together.
We ran our annual children’s clothes drive in the first three weeks of November. At Christmas time, we also held a shoebox drive. These service initiatives were also successful . We brought the donated items to Gifts-to-Give in New Bedford, and took a tour of their facility. We are hoping to take another tour of their facility as a group, with an emphasis on service learning, and perhaps partner with them so some of our older children can volunteer.
We have been talking about how service is not an ‘event’. We have been trying to create a sense of service work as part of the day-to-day fabric of our community.
Looking toward the near future, we are going to talk with the children about ‘leadings’ this winter, and into the spring. We are also going to do an in-depth study into the life and teachings of George Fox.
We have begun to conceptualize a three-year program that we will start with the children in the fall of 2010. This program will draw on some of the concepts we have explored over the past six years, but in a new way. We will be engaging our younger members in a conversation about God, bible stories, and Friends testimonies , as well as exploring the history of the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement through the contemporary lens of our service work, which we will continue. Over these next years, our hope is to maintain a strong balance between faith and practice, worship and outreach into the larger community.
Dawn Tripp