YFIR is… Quaker In-Reach and Spiritual Outreach

The Young Friends In Residence (YFIR) is an emerging program for New York Yearly Meeting!  This is a dual program for young adults and 6^th – 9^th grade youth.

The young adults serve as Quaker interns living in intentional spiritual community for two years.  They participate in the local meeting in addition to facilitating the youth retreats.  The youth retreats, modeled after Powell House programs, offer 6^th – 9^th graders a stable and affirming space to experience Quaker spirituality and to nurture one another.

The YFIR Interns work with their host Meeting (Perry City Monthly Meeting) region and the Yearly Meeting to deepen the Spiritual life of the wider Quaker community. YFIR interns hope to travel to monthly meetings across the Yearly Meeting, actively participate in Quaker gatherings, and to serve on committees. Interns also hope to deepen their own personal callings to ministry.

The YFIR Interns are currently living in Beloved Community House in Newfield, NY and offer hospitality there. They also welcome any Friend willing to come and help make Beloved Community House a more welcoming and nurturing place. Stay tuned for upcoming work parties.

 The current YFIR Interns are:

 

Natalie Braun: Natalie comes from a big family of Quakers, but more specifically from a family of five who live in community at the Quaker Intentional Village in East Chatham, NY.  She is fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel all over the world, and is currently studying ecologically sustainable and regenerative methods of farming and living, as well as community healthcare practices and birth in different cultures with Goddard College. 

Natalie came to the Young Friends in Residence program through her long and loving connection with the Powell House Youth Program and her work on the Young Adult Concerns Committee of New York Yearly Meeting.  She is thrilled to be a part of this young and growing community, excited to begin co-facilitating conferences, honored to be a part of creating joyful and powerful connections with the youth of our Yearly Meeting. 

 

Anna Obermayer: Anna is a member of Binghamton Community Friends Meeting. She attended Earlham College and graduated with a degree in history in May 2009. She has a long history of service work and believes serving one’s community is an intrinsic part of our beliefs as Friends. She considers herself a Friend in the Spirit of Christ and writes a Quaker blog, Raised In the Light (http://www.raisedinthelight.blogspot.com) She also labors with a concern for open communication among different branches of The Religious Society of Friends and has done so for several years. At the moment she coordinates the New York Yearly Meeting prayer list.

She joined the YFIR program to spend time working with her religious community and deepening her own personal spiritual life. Anna works as cook, coordinator and registrar for the YFIR youth programs.

 

Franklin Crump: Franklin Crump is very excited to be part of the experiment that is the Young Friends In Residence program.  Franklin has been involved in work with youth for many years, both in the New York Yearly Meeting community (as a Junior Yearly Meeting volunteer and as an Adult Presence and co-facilitator at Powell House) and the outside world (working with former street kids in Nicaragua through a Quaker NGO and teaching theater at a youth theater in Troy, NY, and at an after school program in Keene, NH).  As an YFIR Intern, Franklin is looking forward to facilitating youth conferences with Natalie Braun.