Baltimore Monthly Meeting of Friends: Stony Run: Cooperative Outreach News
By: Sandi Morton
Tags: Baltimore, Quaker, Prison Reform, Burundi, Belize

There are challenges and opportunities McKim is facing with the changes in our neighborhood, such as the completion of the Ronald McDonald House. The space adjacent to the Aisquith Street Meeting House has been the staging area for the Ronald McDonald construction.

Ronald McDonald House & McKim.

The Meeting House & Ronald McDonald House

McKim is getting advice and support from Friends School and is reaching out to gain resources to repair and upgrade our historic facilities to meet our future program needs:

a.) McKim is working with the Neighborhood Design Center, a pro-bono architect-driven organization, to describe the scope of work required to restore and renovate McKim’s two historic buildings. We anticipate needing to raise considerable funds to do the restoration/renovation.

b.) McKim secured a strategic planning grant from the Catonsville Presbyterian Church to undertake a few needed projects including an organizational assessment and a website redesign.

c.) We successfully connected two McKim students to the STRIDE program — McKim now has two STRIDE campers who attended Opequon in 2018 and who will return in 2019. We now have a third McKim camper slot available for 2019. So exciting!

McKim is working with partners to develop new grant applications to secure funding for operations and programming costs.

McKim is very appreciative of Stony Run’s continuing program support over so many years.

Belize Friends School

From letter: Volume II, Chapter 4, Rosalie and Adrian in Belize March 15, 2019

Our return to Belize has been our busiest time since starting this project. Our first week was spent working with our School Board to prepare for their “Gala” fund-raiser. This is a relatively new effort to raise money for school scholarships, both for our students here, and to subsidize graduates who may go on to private high schools. We timed it this year to sell 35 extra tickets to the FUM Board Members attending their annual conference.

From March 2–9 we hosted the General Board (GB) Meeting of Friends United Meeting, Caribbean and American section. Our little school hosted 35 Quakers from Canada, Jamaica and the USA. Our Cuban delegates finally got all the needed visas, but then one of the airlines involved balked at bringing Cuban citizens through Mexico to Belize. Our myriad hours talking with embassy officials went for naught, much to our disappointment.

One of the feature events of the GB highlights was the visit of Dale Graves family. Dale, you will remember, was the guiding light of FUM’s work in Belize until he was discovered to have an advanced cancer. We had met before, and I continued to consult with him as I worked on my analysis of facilities here. In his honor, the meeting room here has been named Dale Graves Hall.

The GB met in formal session Monday and Tuesday mornings. Much of the time was devoted to hearing about and experiencing the School and Center programs. In the end, I think the Board left with a much better knowledge and awareness of the strengths and weaknesses here. Our staff and students, and our tiny Meeting did a super job planning the details of the week. Meeting hosted the visitors to lunch after Meeting for Worship on First day, and then planned a full day of activities on Friday, when all the visitors and all our students and staff made a trip to the Mayan ruins at Alton Ha, visited an amazing organic farm, and finished the day at the “Baboon” sanctuary at Bermudian Landing. “Baboon’ was the British colonists name for black howler monkeys, one of our local forest residents. In a program of deliberate community collaboration, the local farmers have utilized their properties in a manner to enhance rather than destroy monkey habitat. As a result, there are now over 5000 howlers in the cooperative forests, versus the 400 there in 1981.

Black Howler Monkey

The Friday trip was a good example of events during the week. Our (former) criticism that visitors interacted little with our school students went completely out the window. Throughout the week there were many joint activities. Playing together, worshipping together, and working on school and community improvement projects.

On Saturday as our visitors left Pastor Oscar and our Meeting Attender Clifton Major hosted our Basketball Tournament and Talks about Human Trafficking at a local private basketball court. About 40 young people attended from around south Belize City, giving close attention to the presentation about the facts and hazards to them of human trafficking here in Belize City and abroad. Slavery is still with us! Our human trafficking campagin is funded by Canadian Friends Foreign Mission Board and by Baltimore Monthly Meeting of Freinds, Stony Run. There will be more events over the next two years. At the end of the day we were doubly pleased that our team of students took second place in the tournament, a first for them!

This week we are hosting a student workgroup from Wilmington College, Ohio. They are regular visitors here and do very good work. I have a list of 13 building-related tasks that they are whittling away at, as well as their leading worship every morning, helping in classrooms and leading a two-hour activity every day after the close of the eachschool day. Yesterday they did a lot of cleaning, removing our endemic dust from exterior surfaces, installed a new pressure pump on our water system, and today a new classroom wall will be built. Fortunately, they also brought a checkbook from Wilmington Friends Disaster Service, so are buying materials for us as well as installing them. Thank you, Wilmington!!

Friends Women’s Association (Burundi)

Friends Women’s Association is building a new hospital to prevent the spread of HIV from mother to child.

Building began in September 2018 with a donation from Vancouver Island Monthly Meeting.

In addition to the funds from Vancouver Island Monthly Meeting, FWA has received $13,416 through Global Giving.

GlobalGiving connects nonprofits, donors, and companies in nearly every country around the world. FWA is ranked 19 out of all 5706 projects for 2018.

Breaking Ground

The building will include a delivery room, consulataiton rooms, and a laboratory.