Summer is Quaker travel season, a time when Yearly Meeting annual sessions and Quaker gatherings of all sorts occur one after the other, often concurrently, from the middle of May until early September.  As the AFSC Friends Relations Associate, I traveled to a total of six Quaker conferences or business sessions this summer, talking about and presenting different aspects of AFSC’s work.  Each session was imbued with its own flavor of Quaker faith and practice, heavily influenced by the unique geographical, political, and social context of its member meetings and churches. 

Tetiena Harley served as the Friends Relation intern at AFSC. She is a double major in Religious Studies and Philosophy at Elizabethtown College. She grew up in Philadelphia where she developed a passion for knowing all different types of people, cultures and religions. Though never coming in contact with Quakers until this year, she has developed an appreciation for the Quaker values and mission and hopefully plans to work with them again in the future.

Tetiena Harley, the Friends Relations summer intern, sat down with Hector Cortez, the Deputy General Secretary, to discuss his journey to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and how he plans to further AFSC’s mission to be a diverse and inclusive organization.  Their conversation illuminates both the spiritual and practical dimensions of Hector’s work, work that has taken off since he started with the organization nearly one year ago.  I had the privilege of attending the “Undoing Racism” workshop as part of this new initiative, and could feel the movement for real

Note: Mike Merryman-Lotze wishes to make clear that these are his personal views. This piece was originally published by Mondoweiss. - Lucy