New Children's and Youth Development Worker for London
The Quaker Life team are excited to welcome Julia Stacey to the role of Children and Youth Development worker for the 7 area meetings in London. Julia will work with local Quakers to help create more opportunities for children, youth and families to participate in Quaker communities. She will also work to help adults and meetings gain skills and confidence in welcoming children, youth and families to develop Quaker communities that are loving, inclusive and all ages.
Julia will be at events and meetings across London over the coming months. London Quakers are invited to get in touch with Julia to share opportunities/challenges you can work together on to support children, young people or families.
As part of her induction, Julia travelled to shadow the Local Development Worker for Kent, Sussex and Surrey while they worked with Chichester meeting on their spiritual review. Here are her reflections from the day:
'The day started with meeting for worship. As someone who attends Friends House local meeting, I'm always taken aback by how absolutely quiet worship can get, when not punctuated by bustling city sounds. After meeting for worship, we shared lunch before moving onto the spiritual review. I enjoyed all the activities and discussions Ruth led, and was particularly intrigued by her question “how did you get here today?" Both “how did physically get here today, but also “what led us all to Quakers, to this moment, to this experience…" It got me thinking how many twists and turns my life took to lead me to this job. I could have never seen it coming, but I'm so happy I was led to it.
That evening as I made my way back to London, I had many thoughts. Some were practical, on how I could adapt discussion questions and activities in my own work. But many were of a spiritual nature. My biggest take away was “we're all young but also old depending". During this day I'd been the youngest person present by far. But at upcoming events I'll be the oldest by far. I look forward to finding out and seeing where the youthfulness is in Quaker communities and to working together to create loving, all age communities."