Youth Epistle, June 7-9, 2024
To Friends everywhere,
We send you our greetings with love. We gathered this weekend at Canby Grove for crafts, games, swimming, learning, reflection, and idea sharing. We enjoyed spending time in nature with our community. We hope this Epistle finds you well.
First, we discussed the best way to go about reparations with indigenous peoples and in general. We agreed that the first step is to educate ourselves on the culture and how they have been harmed historically as well as in the present day. The next step is to involve ourselves in the community in a non-invasive way, engaging and connecting with the people, as well as communicating with them in regards to what they want reparations to look like. Words are not enough for reparations and while money is important, it’s important to be genuine and have more action behind our reparations than money alone. We agreed that while not perfect, SCYMF has been doing a good job at many of these steps and is moving in the correct direction.
This year, the youth of Sierra Cascades had two campfires, although it was too buggy to enjoy them for very long. We also swam in the nearby pool and painted rocks. On a more serious note, we watched a video on cultural sharing and discussed the difference between cultural appropriation and appreciation. We also talked about how to do reparations, as already discussed, as well as discussing how to use our funds and ideas for the future.
Our plans, ideas, and suggestions for the future are as follows: dungeons and dragons during fall quarterly as we have done a few other times in the past, making sure next year’s yearly meeting is after school is out for the summer as to not exclude youth from Friday’s activities, learning about native Hawaiian culture, try to have the option for a later breakfast, having more time for swimming, having more freedom to move around and make decisions, as the youth believe we are responsible enough to communicate our whereabouts with adults and get things from where we are sleeping when necessary, and we would also like more youth events, potentially networking with other churches or yearly meetings.
Another thing we discussed was community service projects. We would like more service projects in the future. Some suggestions we had were volunteering at the Eloheh farm, which would’ve been this year’s service project and picking up trash somewhere safe and not too hot, such as a beach or park.
Our last topic of discussion was how we thought the 300,000 dollars SCYMF is debating about currently should be used. Our ideas were to donate it to somewhere like a charity, orphanage, Gaza, local schools, children experiencing hunger, small businesses, or hospitals. The suggestion most in line with the meeting’s current discussion was to use most of the money for reparations, but to keep a portion in case we need it.
We’re looking forward to more opportunities for connecting in the future, perhaps sharing ice cream and goofy games, as well as learning, helping make decisions, and showing up in the world in a genuine way that supports everyone.
