Quaker Workcamp Experience

Workshop Number

Leader(s)

Greg

Woods

Audience

Who may register:

Intergenerational (a target of 30%-50% HS)

Time breakdown

Experiential Activities:

65%

Lecture:

Discussion:

15%

Description

Short Description:

For over 90 years the workcamp model has been a way to live the Friends Testimonies by helping our neighbors, either locally or globally. Join us for a Quaker workcamp experience as we work on a project in Bowling Green.

Long Description:

During the workshop, we will explore how we can live out the Friends Testimonies through service, witnessing, and forming and building relationships within the group and within the larger community through service work.

My main expectation for the week is to have the participants be fully engaged in the service project and with the community where we will be serving. To be fully engaged means being respectful of the community where we work and each other and willing to be flexible throughout the week, because sometimes our greatest service can be just to listen. I hope that the group will form a community among us, so we can work together more efficiently and be more open to sharing and learning new skills throughout the service project.

Each day, we will have time for worship. On the first day, I will have a longer introduction about the workcamp tradition and the service project that we will undertake during the week. On the last day, I will leave time for a longer reflection about the week.

The rest of the time will be focused on the act of carrying out a service project within walking distance of the Bowling Green State University Campus that will be determined in Spring of 2010 and structured around the needs of the local community.

At least two weeks prior to the Gathering, I will send out to registered participants: information about the specific project, a detailed list of stuff to bring, and possible readings about the organization(s) where we will be working during the week. Participants, at least, should expect to bring clothes that can get very dirty and/or paint on them.

The focus of workshop will not be how much we can accomplish during the week at the service project but about the relationships formed during the week, learning about the community of Bowling Green, and practicing the act of witnessing that can happen during a workcamp project.

Leader Discernment Process:

Workcamps have transformed my life and I want to provide the opportunities to others. When I was 15, I went on my first workcamp, an AFSC-IMYM Joint Service Project workcamp on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. After this first workcamp, I noticed a shift inside myself. I started not to care as much about material possessions and started valuing human interactions. I also decided to devote my life to working towards peace.

Currently, I run workcamps for William Penn House as the Coordinator of Washington Quaker Workcamps. I see this job as a spiritual calling, because I personally know the power that the workcamps can have to change people's lives, especially teenagers, so I work to create conditions for a transformational experience. With the workcamps I lead, alongside the physical activities,I emphasize community learning and witnessing as vital components of the service projects.

Over the last decade, since I first attended a workcamp, when I talked to older Quakers about workcamps, I have heard amazing stories of personal and spiritual growth at young ages that shaped lives of service. We are slowly losing this history in Quakerism due to the changing nature of our organizations and the lack of funding for youth programs. Recently, FGC started the Quaker Quest program to try to strengthen spiritually our unprogrammed monthly meetings and to improve their outreach. Likewise, starting in the late 1910s, the workcamps were a way to nurture spiritually our young people and to attract people to Quakerism. I know of many stories of people discovering Quakerism through the workcamp movement. For examples of these stories, please browse through the reflections on the American Friends Service Committee 90th Anniversary webpage (http://tools.afsc.org/reflections/)

The vision of leading a workcamp workshop came from participants in my interest group on workcamps at last year's Gathering at Blacksburg. At the end of the interest group, someone mentioned that every year there is a service project workshop in the K Group of Junior Gathering program. Another person said that sounded like an interesting idea and another person said, “Greg should organize it!” After spending time thinking about this, I feel like it is something that I would like to try to do, because I am slowly trying to revive the workcamp movement through my job at William Penn House, and I work with others who are trying to revive this critical movement in the broader Quaker community.

I have shared this idea with my supervisors, Byron Sandford, Executive Director of William Penn House, and Brad Ogilvie, Program Coordinator of William Penn House, and I have their support in moving forward with this workcamp.

Leader Experience:

While I was a student at Earlham, I began leading workcamps on my own for fellow classmates to New Orleans and Nicaragua. After graduating, I found my way to William Penn House, where my job is to lead workcamps full time in the Washington DC area as the Coordinator of Washington Quaker Workcamps. I lead about 30 workcamps per year, usually on issues affecting the DC metro area, like environment, hunger, and homelessness. In addition to my work in DC, I lead workcamps to New Orleans and West Virginia each year.