This summer marks the completion of our seventh program year! Over 160 young adults have spent a year living in community with peers doing justice work in coalition with Quaker Meetings and community based organizations in Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis/St.Paul, Philadelphia and Portland, OR!
We are excited to share a video we made in partnership with Friends Journal/QuakerSpeak which highlights some of the impact, learnings, and experience of QVS from seven Alums who are living, working, and in community with Friends around the country. We invite you to take a moment to engage with their experience of QVS, and how it has continued to impact their vocational, spiritual, and communal trajectories in life!
Below are a few Alumni excerpts/thoughts on our QVS core values:
Community
“I mean it was epic! You’re moving into a house with six or seven other people who you’ve never met before. All I knew about them was that they were also interested in deepening their spirituality and doing social justice work… I’ve never been in a space where I was with other young people focused on spirituality, and it just felt so radical in so many ways. We weren’t roommates, we were people who moved in with each other and said, “I’m committed to your transformation for this year, I’m committed to you deepening your spirituality, I’m committed to your wellness, and I don’t know your middle name!”
Service 
“There are ways of thinking about service, further back in history that are patronizing or are really not about equal power between people. I was looking for an idea of service that is not about being a savior who jumps in to make things better but about showing up to be there and to do the work with people who are in the community you’re serving.”
Transformation
“There was something really profoundly incredible about the incubator of Quaker Voluntary Service for being able to make mistakes, and having community to do that in. That led to some incredible personal transformation for me.”
The Quaker Way
“I was a recently convinced Friend when I heard about QVS and it seemed like a great opportunity to be able to try something different, and find work that was more aligned with my values. It ended up being so much more than that…. If everyone in the world had that same opportunity to participate in a program where you can engage deeply with your faith and with important work that needs to be done in the world, I think it would be quite a different world.”
If you have been a long-term QuakerSpeak Follower, you might remember our first QuakerSpeak video which was created around five years ago, in the first season of QuakerSpeak! Much growth and change with QVS and QuakerSpeak since then, and you might recognize some familiar faces that we are still so grateful are involved and committed to the mission of QVS.
