AROUND FRIENDS CENTER: HOLIDAY CLOSURES
Please note Friends Center will close for the 2017 year-end holidays on the following days:
Thanksgiving
- Close EARLY at 6 pm on Wed. 11/22
- CLOSED Thursday 11/23 & Friday 11/24
Christmas
- CLOSED Friday 12/22 & Saturday 12/23
- Sunday 12/24 open for Quaker meeting for worship, closes early at 2 pm
- CLOSED Monday 12/25
New Year’s Day
- CLOSED Monday, Jan. 1
Our full 2017 holiday calendar is online here.
The 2018 calendar will be emailed to tenants and posted online after the Friends Center board of directors acts on it at their next meeting later this month.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Tenants in a Green Building: Wanna take a tour?
We often give outside groups tours of Friends Center’s LEED Platinum-certified green building features. These include the green roof, stormwater cisterns, geothermal heating and cooling system, and solar panels. Not to mention our five (count ‘em, 5!!) streams of waste.
Now, we’d like to invite our building residents for a tour, too! You’re welcome to bring a family member or friend as well.
Please email me if you’re interested. Also, let me know if certain days just don’t work for you (e.g., “never available Monday afternoon”; or “I’m only here Monday, Wednesday and Friday”).
If just a few people respond, I’ll use a doodle poll to find a date. If a lot of people are interested, we will offer 2 or 3 tours at varying times.
– Chris Mohr, Executive Director
EVENTS
Net Tuesday, 11/1/2017: How to Influence Online Conversations
Net Tuesday meets in the Rufus Jones Room here at Friends Center on the first Tuesday of the month. The topic for the November 1 meeting this month is, “Learn how to influence online conversations.” Doors open at 6 and discussion is at 6:30. Read more and (optional) RSVP.
TENANT NEWS
Q&A with AFSC’s Gregory Corbin: Social Justice Leadership Institute
Gregory Corbin talks about the American Friends Service Committee’s Social Justice Leadership Institute (SJLI), a new program helping young people in the Philadelphia area to develop as social change leaders. Read more.
CAIR assists with legal victory for mosque in Ben Salem
The Council on American Islamic Relations, Philadelphia chapter, assisted with a legal case that recently led to a settlement between the US Department of Justice and Bensalem. Read more.
Essay by CAIR attorney Timothy Welbeck featured on WHYY.org:
He notes his daughter’s “hair is perfect, though it may take a lifetime to fully convince her”: “I am not my hair.”
Art-Reach film: How ballet made a difference for students with disabilities
Congratulations to Art-Reach on the successful premiere of their film, I Am. The piece received quite a bit of coverage, including this article on Generocity.
Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance holds 7th annual conference in late October
Seizing Opportunity in Transforming Markets
Michelle Angela Ortiz’s Monument Lab project, Seguimos Caminando (We Keep Walking)
The mutifaceted artwork by Michelle Angela Ortiz—who works for The Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation here at Friends Center—honors mothers detained at Berks Detention Center, a prison outside of Philadelphia for immigrant families. Ortiz’s animated projections based on writings from two mothers detained at Berks will be displayed on the north gate of City Hall on Wednesday and Friday evenings through November 19, 8–10 p.m.
Young Involved Philadelphia: Civic Engagement Fair Oct. 12
Bethany Chisholm Yost of Girls Inc. staff serves on the board of Young Involved Philadelphia, a non-partisan nonprofit that provides programming to connect young people to Philly’s civics, nonprofits, and community development. Their annual event series, State of Young Philly, kicks off with a free Civic Engagement Fair on October 12 at Painted Bride. Register for the fair here.
The rest of the SOYP lineup is here.
Friends World Committee celebrates World Quaker Day
The first Sunday in October was World Quaker Day. See how members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), from the various branches of Quakerism, marked the occasion around the world: http://www.worldquakerday.org/