2022 Appeal Letter
Dear Friends,
We are writing to ask your help to meet several urgent needs.
Our old, outdated furnace and water heater were both failing, so we decided to take the necessary steps to replace them with new, more efficient units before the next heating season. The cost for this work is $24,000.
Your generous support is needed to pay this bill, and help us maintain the meetinghouse.
Please send a check today to:
Worcester Friends Meeting
901 Pleasant Street
Worcester, MA 01602
You can also donate directly through WFM's PayPal site.
Yours in the Light,
Daron Barnard, Clerk
From the Peace, Social Concern, and Outreach Committee
Our committee is working on a land acknowledgment monument to recognize that the land where the meetinghouse stands was once the territory of Native Americans.
New England Yearly Meeting has for several years recommended that monthly meetings strive toward right relationships with the Native American groups who are the original inhabitants of these lands. Such recognition requires learning about who these groups were and still are, and hopefully developing a relationship with their members.
Guided by this calling, Worcester Friends Meeting decided to place a stone monument in front of our meetinghouse to acknowledge the original Nipmuc inhabitants as stewards of the land. We have had conversations with various local residents who identify their family origins from the Nipmuc people, and hope to foster further relationships with them soon. We feel the audience of this effort should be the residents of Worcester who may not be knowledgeable about this background, and their loss of territory to the colonists. The message on the stone will be:
Honoring the Nipmuc People: Land Acknowledgment 2022
This Friends Meetinghouse stands on land
Taken by colonists from the Nipmuc people,
The rightful guardians of this land.
We honor and thank them
For their respectful care of the land and waters,
Plants and wildlife of this region
Since ancient times.
It will cost about $1900 to make this plaque with the text, and to affix the plaque to a prepared stone might bring the price up to $3000.
Our second request is in support of Bulungi (Welcome) Tree Shade Friends Meeting in Jinja, Uganda. It remains the only welcoming and affirming Friends Meeting in East Africa. They use available resources to provide safe transport of LGBTQ+ persons out of the country who are persecuted there. PASCO has already sent some urgently needed funds to Uganda, but we invite potential donors to consider giving directly to this cause through the websites below.
For several years Worcester Meeting has been providing support to Friends Ugandan Safe Transport (FUST), a project of the Olympia, WA Friends Meeting. This summer we raised funds that enabled 86 passengers to depart from Uganda.
Another collaboration is with the Rape Hurts Foundation, organized by the pastor of Bulungi Tree Shade Friends Meeting, Hellen Tanyinga. They provide shelter and safety to women and children who’ve been beaten, raped or sexually abused.
Recently, the Ugandan police brought 19 sexually trafficked children between five and twelve years old to the Rape Hurts Foundation for food, shelter, medical care and safekeeping. The Bulungi Friends Meeting shares in this commitment.
At this time of accelerated inflation and food insecurity, we would also like to continue our support for COSECHA, a group of local undocumented families, who are ineligible for governmental subsidies like SNAP. We’d like to offer gift cards to each family for food purchases.
With this special appeal we are hoping that members and attenders will be as generous as possible, to support both the necessary repairs to our building and the current objectives of PASCO. Donations for these special appeals can be made by check to Worcester Friends Meeting at the address above or through the WFM Paypal site. Thank you!
Lucy Candib and Richard Schmitt, Co-Clerks of PASCO