Junior Young Friends (JYF) was a Quaker youth group within Britain Yearly Meeting for 13- to 18-year-olds, which held weekend-long gatherings roughly 3 times a year.
Events took place in a Quaker Meeting House, usually in the Birmingham area. It was, strictly speaking, responsible to Warwickshire Monthly Meeting, although Central England Quakers eventually took over the role. However, it attracted participants from across the United Kingdom, especially for the Bournville Christmas event.
The appendage of the word 'Junior' to the name was in order to distinguish from Young Friends usually used to describe Quakers aged 18–30 (as in Young Friends General Meeting).
The weekends sometimes had a theme, often related to Quaker ideals, which was contemplated through Base Group discussions, the Committee-run sessions and sometimes guest speakers. There was also a significant amount of free time allocated to allow participants to explore the city where the event was held. The tradition of staying up into the early hours of the morning, or not even sleeping at all, was embraced by the majority of the participants. JYF has evolved a number of in-jokes and other traditions including the love of beans and the celebration of "Pi time," by eating a type of pie such as a mince pie at 3:14am. These traditions often appear quite odd to those who have little experience of the young Quaker culture.
There are also a number of JYF groups worldwide.
Historically, there were JYF groups throughout Britain, but a number of circumstances led to their closure, to the point that the Warwickshire Junior Young Friends was the last surviving one. Many Quaker youth groups are now known as Link Groups, but differ from Junior Young Friends because they are organised partly or in whole by adults. JYF was solely organised by The Committee who were all 19 or under. To fulfil legal requirements, there were Responsible Adult supervisors (RA's) on site throughout the weekend.
After several years of dwindling numbers and COVID struggles, the event was reduced to merely the Bournville one at Christmas. Shortly after, Central England Quakers decided to cut off support for the event, citing increasing safeguarding regulations, lack of committee members within the age range and a general lack of interest in running the event. The final JYF was held at Bournville Meeting House from the 17–19 December 2021. [1] It was run as a celebration of JYF's recent history, and unusually had a changed age range of 18-25 as there weren't enough adult volunteers to safeguard under 18s.
JYFs closure marked the end of Junior Young Friends events in Britain. Rosie and Sammy Gilbert, the main organisers for the last few years, have expressed interest in restarting the event following the easing of lockdown rules. Along with a skeleton crew of former JYF committee members, they have set up a successor event called Fellowship of the Friends (pronounced F-OFF) targeting the 18-25 year-old age range. [2]
In recent years, JYF's have been held at Friend's Meeting Houses in the following locations:
Specific
Friends General Conference (FGC) is an association of Quakers in the United States and Canada made up of 16 yearly meetings and 12 autonomous monthly meetings. "Monthly meetings" are what Quakers call congregations; "yearly meetings" are organizations of monthly meetings within a geographic region. FGC was founded in 1900.
Bournville is a model village on the southwest side of Birmingham, England, founded by the Quaker Cadbury family for employees at its Cadbury's factory, and designed to be a "garden" village where the sale of alcohol was forbidden. Cadbury's is well known for chocolate products – including a dark chocolate bar branded Bournville. Historically in northern Worcestershire, it is also a ward within the council constituency of Selly Oak and home to the Bournville Centre for Visual Arts and the Cadbury's chocolate factory. Bournville is known as one of the most desirable areas to live in the UK; research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2003 found that it was "one of the nicest places to live in Britain".
George Cadbury was an English Quaker businessman and social reformer who expanded his father's Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate company in Britain.
The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as Britain Yearly Meeting, is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is the national organisation of Quakers living in Britain. Britain Yearly Meeting refers to both the religious gathering and the organisation. "Yearly Meeting", or "Yearly Meeting Gathering" are usually the names given to the annual gathering of British Quakers. Quakers in Britain is the name the organisation is commonly known by.
Sport has always been important in Birmingham, England, from the hundreds of diverse grass-roots sports clubs to internationally famous teams, associations and venues.
Young Friends General Meeting (YFGM) is the national organisation for young Quakers in the United Kingdom. The name refers both to the organisation and to the General Meetings which are held in February, May and October each year, in various Quaker Meeting Houses in Britain. The organization also publishes a tri-annual magazine entitled The Young Quaker.
Yearly Meeting is an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in most of the world; in England, local congregations are now called Area Meetings, in Australia Monthly Meetings are called Regional Meetings. "Monthly" and "Yearly" refer to how often the body meets to make decisions. Monthly Meetings may be local congregations that hold regular Meetings for Worship, or may comprise a number of Worship Groups. Depending on the Yearly Meeting organization, there may also be Quarterly Meetings, Half-Yearly Meetings, or Regional Meetings, where a number of local Monthly Meetings come together within a Yearly Meeting.
The Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) is a Quaker organisation that works to communicate between all parts of Quakerism. FWCC's world headquarters is in London. It has General Consultative NGO status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 2002. FWCC shares responsibility for the Quaker UN Office in Geneva and New York City with the American Friends Service Committee and Britain Yearly Meeting.
Bournbrook is an industrial and residential district in southwest Birmingham, England, in the ward of Bournbrook and Selly Park and the parliamentary constituency of Birmingham Selly Oak. Before 2018 it was in Selly Oak Council Ward. Prior to what is commonly termed the Greater Birmingham Act, which came into effect on 9 November 1911, the Bourn Brook watercourse was the North Eastern boundary of Worcestershire, and the area was locally governed by the King's Norton and Northfield Urban District Council.
Forest School Camps (FSC) is an organization primarily aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 17. FSC runs camps throughout the year, with the main ones lasting 13 nights during late July and August, and additional one-week and weekend camps at Easter and during the spring and early summer.
Eeyore's Birthday Party is a day-long festival taking place annually in Austin, Texas since 1963. It typically occurs on the last Saturday of April in Austin's Pease District Park. It includes live music, food and drink vending which benefit local non-profit organizations, attendees in colorful costumes, and very large drum circles. The event is frequented by children and families, with specific events presented for them by the event organizers. The festival is named in honor of Eeyore, a character in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after John 15:14 in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers as the founder of the movement, George Fox, told a judge to quake "before the authority of God". The Friends are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to be guided by the inward light to "make the witness of God" known to everyone. Quakers have traditionally professed a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity, as well as Nontheist Quakers. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 367,243 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa followed by 21% in North America.
Dame Elizabeth Mary Cadbury was a British activist and philanthropist. Her husband was George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer.
Bournville School is an all-through school and primary school with academy status, for students aged 4–16, in Bournville, Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The school has around 850 pupils currently on the roll, including a primary provision of around 150 students. The school became an Academy School on 1 November 2014 under the sponsorship of The Fairfax Multi Academy Trust (FMAT). Fairfax Academy is also in the same MAT.
Silhillians Rugby Union Football Club is a rugby club based at Copt Heath near Solihull in the English West Midlands. They compete in Midlands 2 West (South). The club regularly fields a 1st and 2nd XVs and in the 'Mini and Junior' section teams range from Under 6s to Under 17s and Colts
New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply New York Yearly Meeting or NYYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings and worship groups in New York State, northern and central New Jersey, and southwestern Connecticut.
European and Middle East Young Friends (EMEYF) is a Quaker organisation based in Europe for young Quaker adults. Its aims are to fostering communication amongst, and spread information about, young Friends communities in different parts of Europe and the Middle East.
Bethel Marthoma Church is a Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church located at Chengara, Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India. Bethel Marthoma Church belongs to the Ranni Nilackal Diocese of Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church. It is the biggest church in Chengara in terms of membership. Like all other Malankara Churches, St James liturgy is used in Bethel Marthoma Church for worship.
John Henry Barlow, widely called "the outstanding Quaker statesman of his generation", was an ambassador for peace in the war years and clerk of London Yearly Meeting for seven years. He was the person who most held the Society together at a taxing moment in its history. He was one of the first members of the Friends' Ambulance Unit. Later he served 23 years as the first secretary and general manager of the Bournville Village Trust. In 1920 he led a delegation to Ireland to look into the Black and Tans atrocities.
Henry Theodore Hodgkin was a medical doctor and a British Quaker missionary who, in the course of his 55-year life, co-founded the West China Union University in Chengdu, co-founded and led the first Christian pacifist movement, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and founded the Pendle Hill Quaker meeting and training center, in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.