2019 Alice Ambler Award

2019 

Alice Ambler Award

This year 2019, the Alice Ambler award is awarded to the Ramallah Friends School for their 150 years of providing educational excellence based in Friends principles in a community that has faced the hard challenges of our world. We are inspired by their example and blessed by the work of their alumni. Along with the award a letter was sent to the Ramallah school congradulating them on their 150th year aniversery.

 Alice Ambler was a member of Plymouth Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. She lived across the street from the Meetinghouse at a time when Plymouth Meeting was a cross road village is Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, USA. For those of us who came to the Meeting in the 1950’, 60’s and 70’s she was our introduction to a generation of Friends that had made the transition from a quietists period of Friends to a Religious Society fully engaged in the post World War Two world. The lives of this generation of Eastern Friends reinterpreted their Religious Society’s faith and Practice in response to a rapidly contracting world; blending personal and corporate revelation of God’s will with  practical engagement of the sufferings of the people of the world’s many cultures.

 Alice was the last plain speaking Friend in our Monthly Meeting; the use of Thee and Thou when speaking to people, as well as scriptural references to illuminate a point. She was the first woman of her family to complete college and used her degree to work as a social worker, teacher and shop keeper in our communities. Alice was part of the stream of public woman of America who worked outside of the home to improve the situation of her fellow Americans. She was one of a generation of Quaker women who were the daughters (both literally and Spiritually) of Mothers such as Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Alice Paul. The swirl of the world  during her life time brought her the experience of two World Wars, the struggle for woman’s right to vote, House Committee on Un-American Affairs investigation of members of her Quaker Meeting community, the Civil rights movement and Viet Nam. She maintained close and active participation in her faith community urging us to understand the concerns of the world and to response to them.

 Upon her death Plymouth Monthly Meeting established the Alice Ambler Award to honor those in our community and in the wider world who continue her work of building community based upon peace and social justice. During the early years of the award it was given to local High School students who were working in their schools or communities gaining real life experiences of both the joys of working with people of different cultural backgrounds. These students knew firsthand the ways that our society falls short of the equal rights and application of justice that is required for a peaceful and thriving community and chose to personally engage that injustice. Because of Church - State issues it became increasingly difficult to continue the award in its original forum. In more recent years the award has been granted to organizations both local and global who are actively working with peace and social concern issues. Recent recipients of the award are Abington Quarterly Meeting’s building of a School in Afghanistan, The Conshohocken Neighborhood Council, Haitian Partners fund to rebuild schools in Haiti and the Church of the Brethren - Nigeria Crisis Fund work to peacefully address the violance of Boko Haram.

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