Founded by Friend Arne Springorum and his colleague Vit Mateju, the Applied Economy r/Evolution Institute (AEEI) is an independent, Quaker-inspired non-profit research and advisory body examining how capital allocation can inadvertently drive climate breakdown and conflict.
Grounded in the 2016 FWCC Pisac Minute’s call to transform the global economy, AEEI supports Quaker Meetings, grant-makers, and asset stewards in evaluating their financial portfolios, ensuring that institutional investments align with Quaker testimonies of peace, integrity, and care for Creation.
To learn how you can support their mission, explore their volunteer opporunities here.
Rooted in Quaker values and local mediation practices, Bridges is a voluntary initiative in the Scottish Highlands founded by conflict negotiator Neil Crabtree. Developed in response to the social pressures facing modern youth, the initiative uses structured rites of passage, centered around environmental stewardship and community engagement, to help young people cultivate purpose, peace, and mutual connection.
The initiative examines how direct participation in environmental restoration acts as a transformative rite of passage, guiding young lives toward community responsibility and ecological care.
Read Neil Crabtree’s full research paper here and watch the official coverage and feature on Scottish Parliament TV here.
A youth-led initiative founded by Quaker United Nations Summer School alumni, Youth Impacts Development and Environmental Change (YIDEC), has been working in Rwanda to address the challenges of climate change through education, environmental action, and youth empowerment.
In partnership with Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW), YIDEC recently planted 2,000 trees in Bugesera District, an area in Eastern Rwanda that frequently experiences drought. The tree-planting effort aims to restore degraded land, enhance biodiversity, and promote long-term climate resilience. YIDEC engages young people through environmental workshops, awareness campaigns, and practical initiatives. The organization is also preparing to launch a small-scale agriculture-for-business program, designed to support youth—especially those affected by climate change and school absenteeism—by equipping them with sustainable livelihood skills.
By combining environmental stewardship with vocational empowerment, YIDEC is working to cultivate a generation of young leaders committed to creating lasting change in their communities and beyond.
QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change Programme recently compiled an official submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders profiling stories of Quaker Environmental Human Rights Defenders. Gathering testimony from Quaker individuals and organizations in Europe and Africa, the submission upholds actions of conscience that Quakers have engaged in as guided by their faith and commitment to the values of stewardship, sustainability, and integrity.
The submission provides a unique and specific focus on the efforts of Quakers because a significant number of high-profile climate change protest action originated in the Quaker community. The report gathers inspiration from their successes while also sharing the risks and retaliation they have experienced as a result of expressing concern over insufficient government action to transform human activities driving planetary crises. The submission will inform that work of U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, as she prepares her October 2025 report to the U.N. General Assembly on human rights defenders working on climate change and a just transition. QUNO is grateful to those individuals and groups who shared their personal histories. Such courageous and conscientious acts will further climate justice and calls attention to the rights these defenders are working to protect. In addition to personal stories from Quakers around the world, the submission also offers recommendations for how states and U.N. bodies should advance in protecting environmental human rights defenders.
Please read or download the full text of the statement below:
Image courtesy of ‘Friends Journal’ and FWCC: “Food distribution in Gatumba, Burundi, supported by FWCC’s Climate Emergency Fund, following floods, 2024.“
‘Friends Journal’, a prominent Quaker media publication, recently profiled actions Quaker meetings and communities are taking around the world to address and respond to climate change.
Staff writer Sharlee DiMenichi highlights efforts taken at the local and international levels by Quakers including in Kenya, Bolivia, the Philippines, and at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The article demonstrates Friends’ widespread concern for climate as a peace and justice issue while documenting specific examples of the personalized impacts of a warming planet. It delves into the ongoing work of various Quaker organizations including climate related efforts by Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), Friends International Bilingual Center (FIBC), Quaker Earthcare Witness, Earth Quaker Action Team, and Quaker United Nations Office. Portraying the depth and breadth of these actions, it is clear that Friends are witnessing and responding to a wide range of public health, economic, and weather related effects of climate change. Their work is clearly critical in implementing sustainable practices to address climate change’s root causes.
Grounding Quaker action in foundational testimonies of peace, equality, and sustainability is a commitment shared across the world and Friends Journal has written about these efforts in an inspiring and galvanizing piece.
Quakers United for Environmental Sustainability Program (QUESP) is a new initiative formed by members from the Malava Yearly Meeting and led by Jairus Koki. Their mission is “To be true Stewards of God’s Creation through actions to combat climate change”. The formation of the program is inspired by concerns about the adverse effects of climate change affecting communities in Western Kenya, including changing rain patterns, failure of crops leading to increased food insecurity, and the destruction of water catchment areas.
Members of the group feel that they have a duty to combat the negative effects resulting from climate change by taking responsibility for the care of the world that God bestowed to us in Genesis as stewards. These effects have left Quaker churches, schools, and homes bare without trees and natural vegetation, even lacking shade to sit under when it is hot. Many indigenous trees that were known to provide shelter and conserve water catchment areas have either been uprooted or cut down for charcoal.
QUESP members feel obliged to be stewards of God’s creation and help restore it. Though still a new organization, they plan to realize this mission through several activities, including visiting churches (of Quakers and non-Quakers) to spread awareness on taking care of God’s creation; documenting indigenous methods of environmental conservation; undertaking tree nursery development and management training, and by supporting tree seedling plantings to restore destroyed habitats. QUESP is in the process of registration and hopes to achieve these dreams with the help of like minded friends.
Bolivian young adult volunteers from the Friends International Bilingual Center (FIBC) have organized a Food Security Project to address the impact of climate change on indigenous families in the highland villages. In 2022, these communities faced hunger due to severe drought related to climate change. Many families who depend on the potato crop for food lost their main source of food and faced famine. Without intervention the crisis would have continued for multiple years because one year’s harvest provides seed for the next season’s crop.
In the first half of 2023 FIBC distributed 100 pounds of potatoes to each family at a cost of $50 per family. Then in October, 2023 more than 300 families each received 125 pounds of seed potatoes at a cost of $50 per family. With favor of God, in 2024 the families who benefited from the Food Security Project had a good harvest to sustain their families. So, they thanked God, and also deeply appreciated the young volunteers and donors.
However, last year FIBC was not able to provide potatoes or seed potatoes to other families in these indigenous communities. In 2024 we have been distributing food staples to prevent famine. Also, we plan to raise $7,500 (USD) to distribute seed potatoes to these addition communities in time for the Bolivian planting season, October and November of 2024.
Quaker Peace and Social Witness has shared that on 22 September, individuals were invited to participate in Loss and Damage Action Day. Last week, people around the world stood in solidarity with those living under the worst conditions of the climate crisis and called for “polluters to pay up.” As rich countries and large emitters of greenhouse gas emissions continue to knowingly damage the planet and threaten the well being of the earth’s most vulnerable, Quakers continue to call for urgent, sustainable and transformative climate action.
Photo by Michael Preston
Loss and Damage refers specifically to the negative impacts of climate change that have already been experienced. It also refers to those losses that have yet to occur but inevitably will. Often the people most impacted are already the poorest and most vulnerable inhabitants of earth who have contributed the least to the climate crisis. On the 22nd, hundreds of Quakers and others came together across the United Kingdom, including as part of a walk of witness from St. John’s Church, Waterloo, to Parliament Square, in order to increase pressure on the largest polluters to be responsible for the consequences of their actions.
Photo by Michael Preston
As the climate crisis continues to be increasingly felt around the world, it is more important than ever to put pressure on those most responsible. To stand in solidarity at any time of the year with those most impacted by climate change, here are a few simple actions you can take:
1. Write to your national representatives to tell them about how important it is to fund loss and damage.
Members of Kibogoye Monthly Meeting during a workshop on environmental protection and job creation
Kwibuka Yearly Meeting in Burundi engages Friends and non-friends through a wide range of actions to encourage environmental protection and economic development. This happens through the “Christian Action in a World of Distress” Program. Some of the activities include teaching young vegetable farmers to make organic pesticides and fertilizer to prevent environmental degradation, how to transform non-biodegradable plastics into useful tools, and offer retreats to foster youth leadership in climate action. The group is also planning to open three new nurseries to help combat deforestation.
Participants of a workshop entitled “Managing the Risks of Climate Change”
Friend Brian Wardrop shares thoughts regarding his participation at an extinction rebellion protest in the attached article and elaborates on how Chelmsford Local Meeting engages with Extinction Rebellion;
“We are members of Chelmsford Local Meeting in Essex.Extinction Rebellion Chelmsford (XRC) was formed in February 2019. Several activist Friends in our Meeting joined the movement and, after discussion, Chelmsford Meeting agreed to support them and XRC.
Chelmsford Meeting provides premises for XRC events, as well as for XR Quaker groups passing through that need accommodation, such as a group of Quakers from Norwich cycling to London to join the April Rebellion.
Because Jean and I live so close to London, and are now retired, we have been able to lend our support to actions such as The Time is Now lobby of MPs, and events during the October Rebellion, such as the XR Grandparents rally outside Buckingham Palace.“
