Liam Gardner, Interim ILYM Youth Coordinator, Urbana-Champaign Friends Meeting
Mike Dennis, Clerk of Youth Oversight, Clear Creek Friends Meeting
Over the Martin Luther King weekend, the annual Quake that Rocked the Midwest was held at Evanston Friends meetinghouse. In attendance were 19 teens and 4 main staff: Including 8 teens from Illinois Yearly Meeting (ILYM), Liam Gardner (ILYM Youth Coordinator) and Michael Dennis (ILYM Clerk of Youth Oversight); 6 teens from Scattergood Friends School & Farm (SFSF), and Thomas Weber (SFSF Head of School); and 5 teens from Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting (OVYM) and Kaia Jackson (OVYM Youth Secretary).
During the course of the Quake, there were workshops about warm fuzzies led by Liam Gardner; about social justice and its relationship to Quakers led by Mike Dennis; about restorative justice led by Arica Barton; and about sound and movement led by Gloria Bruner; In addition the teens conducted business meeting and did a service project with Chicago Friends School to help sort, transport and recycle old electronics. They also made pancakes with EFM friends, had an out trip to an indoor trampoline park, played wink, made video blogs, and generally had a good time.
The ILYM Fall Quake will be held on September 27-29 at Salem, Indiana at the Blue River Quarterly gathering. Please contact Liam Gardner for more information on the Quake. For more information on Scattergood Friends School contact Thomas Weber, tweber@scattergood.org.
In closing, the teens and staff wish to thank Jim Davidson, Kaia Jackson, Nora Barber, Gloria Bruner, Thomas Weber, John Knox, Charlotta Koppanyi and Evanston Friends for again sharing their ideas, time, meeting house and homes for hospitality to make the Quake that Rocked the Midwest happen.
