Middletown Meeting Supports Friends Peace Team’s Rwanda Book Project
At their July business meeting, Middletown Meeting Friends approved a donation of $2,500 to support the Friends Peace Team’s Rwanda Book Project. These funds will be used to produce six children’s books for each of the six libraries in the African Great Lakes region plus a librarian’s copy/teacher’s manual for each library and will also help to support an intern working on the project. The books share Quaker approaches to peace and justice that model behavior necessary to create regenerative cultures of peace and justice globally.
Meeting member Sally Farneth provided background information about the project:
“Friends may not realize that this project, using children’s storybooks to teach Quaker values, actually originated 40 years ago at Middletown. Nancy Pickering and I were parents with kids in First Day School; we were also on the Friends General Conference’s Religious Education Committee.
“We were not thrilled with the materials we were finding to use for FDS [First Day School] lessons. Nancy asked if I’d be willing to help her create lessons based on children’s books. The result was the original Sparklers (c.1982) – single sheets in the typical teacher lesson plan format using a book to teach a lesson. Published by FGC, eventually, the printed copies sold out. By that time Nancy and I had gone back to work, she as editor for the Advance, and I to teaching, mostly English as a Second Language.
“In the 2000s FGC decided that it was time to update Sparklers and a working group was formed. I had moved back to PA and was invited to join the working group. Sparkling Still was revised to include not only lessons and numerous book lists, but ‘how to’ sections, since many FDS teachers were no longer former classroom teachers. Sparkling Still was published in 2013. Since that time the working group, now called Sparklers, has continued to update the book lists with current publications on topics of interest to Quakers.
Friends Peace Teams is a Spirit-led organization that develops long-term relationships with communities in conflict around the world to work for justice and healing, and to create enduring cultures of peace.
“In the summer of 2020, Sparklers was contacted by the Friends Peace Teams to help develop collections of books around topics of Peace and Justice for the Peace libraries. The libraries are often small with few books. With COVID-19 restricting travel, our work has turned to finding ‘e-books’ that can be downloaded onto computers and phones. Where funds are available, books are printed, covers laminated and spiral bound, as in the case of the Rwanda project.
“Our work is expanding to include teaching the English language as well as literacy. We are working now in Nepal, Indonesia, as well as Rwanda, and have been approached by Friends in South and Central America, too. The books we have modified for Reading Preparedness may be found here; for the newest lists of books click here.”
Friends who would like to make individual donations to support this project can send a check payable to Middletown Friends Meeting to Kristine Michael Sheffer, at her office: 105 E Maple Avenue, Langhorne, PA 19047. Or, to: Friends Peace Teams, 1001 Park Ave, St Louis, Missouri, 63104-3720.