When I think of well-known figures of AFSC’s past, I think of men—Rufus Jones and Clarence Pickett, more specifically. I’m sure much of this has to do with the fact that I have spent numerous hours sitting in rooms named after them at Friends Center in Philadelphia. But I have little doubt that their familiarity is also due to the general attention that our society pays to men with big ideas and big voices, particularly the society in which the organization was founded. 

As we enter Hatcliffe Extension outside of Harare, Zimbabwe via a dirt road marred by deep ruts and washed out areas with more than a 12-inch drop-off, I wonder if our Toyota four wheel drive will survive with shock absorbers intact. We park and walk toward a grassy area where several men and a woman are repairing a metal wheelbarrow using the only welding machine available. Several others watch the process. Homes surround the workspace.

Jacqueline Duhart, a Unitarian minister, runs a women’s group at Dublin Federal Women’s Prison south of Oakland for AFSC. The original leaders adapted Pace e Bene’s Traveling with the Turtle, a curriculum for women learning nonviolence.

Each year as we approach the annual meeting of the AFSC Corporation, I hear people wondering whether the Corporation has outlived its usefulness – or indeed whether it ever had one. 

Newcomers wonder what the Corporation is for, whether it matters that they attend, and whether, if they do, they will really understand the issues in play. Those with experience of past Corporation meetings have many of the same questions.

I am one who believes the Corporation has immense potential value to AFSC – and also that AFSC has immense value to Quakers in the U.S.