Skip to main content

Baltimore Yearly Meeting builds and nurtures a strong and vibrant Quaker community across the southern Mid-Atlantic. We seek to build community, grow in the life of the spirit, discern right action, and bear witness in the world. BYM includes Quaker meetings in parts of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. The BYM Office, located in Sandy Spring, MD, provides technical support to local Quaker Meetings and opportunities for Quakers in our region to work, play, serve, learn, and grow spiritually together as Friends. 

BYM Change Group Training - Hold Space for Transformation

Saturday, January 19, 2019
10:00 am5:00 pm
Frederick Friends Meeting (Frederick, MD)

The ad hoc Growing Diverse Leadership Committee and the Working Group on Racism invite you to this free Change Group training to realize our vision of overcoming racism and becoming a multicultural religious society. Our lead facilitator is Dr. Amanda Kemp assisted by Dr. Erika Fitz. Both are members of a Lancaster Monthly Meeting. Each training session will be from 10am to 5pm (with an hour lunch break). Click here to download the flyer and registration instructions. The Hold Space for Transformation strategy helps us facilitate and participate in difficult conversations about racism without losing our voices or our cool. It’s a form of mindfulness that can be used in Meetings and in one-on-one conversations. We will practice leaning in to conversations about racism via role plays and heightened listening. Those who have difficulty speaking will practice finding our voices even when afraid to say the wrong thing or when intimidated by others. Those who speak often will discover the secret to having a desired impact without shutting others down. We review important concepts such as: a white frame of reference, institutional racism, interpersonal racism and the limits of color blindness as a strategy to overcome racial inequities. Over the next six weeks we will practice what we learned. A ZOOM call will be scheduled for sharing our experiences in trying out what we learned in the first session. We are also planning a closed Facebook group or a similar online forum for change group members to share our experiences and discuss issues that arise as we do this work.

Powered by Firespring