I was hired by AFSC during the summer of 1976 while I was in college to organize the Connecticut leg of the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice. This was out of the Community for Nonviolent Action in Voluntown, CT. My job was to be the advance person for the walks by setting up press interviews and rallies and further by feeding into the central leg of the walk. The walk itself while incredibly powerful was a bit of an overwhelming experience. There were masses of people many of which were Buddhist monks accompanying us all the while chanting and beating drums. It wasn’t until years later that I actually looked up the chant which translated quite similarly along the lines of a common Quaker saying, “walk cheerfully over the earth answering that of God in every person.” What I really gained from this experience was that
within each of us we have the ability to address difficult problems, we have the ability to transform suffering.

The people I have known who have worked for AFSC as staff, volunteers, and in other capacities have gone on to do amazing work. Many of these people have done such work unrelated to AFSC and it started before they became involved and continued long after they left.

As a place, AFSC has had an incredibly important impact on me throughout my life.

I recently went down to the AFSC Centennial Wage Peace Summit in Philadelphia. This was an incredible experience for me. I went down to summit to connect to Quaker Social Change ministry which tackles the challenging task of attempting to link faith and practice.
Quakers talk about putting faith into practice all the time and this particular program is designed to help Quaker meetings do that.

There were many interesting speeches about the challenges AFSC has had due to it being a humanitarian organization as well as an advocacy program. Some members of AFSC are advocates while others are service providers.

It is undeniable that in my life as well as many others throughout history, AFSC has had an incredible impact.