Living Witness Project
Oxford Friends Group on Sustainable Living In early 2001 a small group of Oxford Friends organised an evening meeting on “How We Live”. Twenty three people came. We talked about our values and the way we express them in our lives. We agreed to meet again a month later and the meetings have kept going. Initially, we struggled with the gap between our visions of a sustainable world and the reality of our lives. It was hard to avoid talking about what we “should” be doing, but this just led to guilt and excuses. Eventually, we found an approach that seems to have worked. We stopped talking about “shoulds” and “oughts”, and concentrated instead on what we were going to do. A thought-shower threw up about 30 ideas for action, from setting up a green corner in the meeting house library to starting a car-sharing scheme. We asked who would take responsibility for making something happen, and 12 of the ideas were adopted. A year later, eight had been carried out. Over the following years, more ideas were added and more of the original 30 have been acted upon. The group is open to all members and attenders in Oxford Meeting. We meet as a group once a month over a shared meal. We typically have 10-12 participants, although the list of Friends who attend from time to time includes about 30 names. Smaller groups meet frequently to work on ongoing projects or plan new ones. We arrange events for Oxford Meeting to celebrate our community and our world (seasonal feasts, ceilidhs, cabarets). Oxford Meeting has been strongly supportive, encouraging us to do an environmental audit of the meeting, and adopting an environmental policy statement developed by the group. In 2004 we ran a weekend workshop on sustainable living for Quakers from around the Southeast. Its success encouraged us to plan further ‘outreach’ projects towards the wider community: - Designing a series of leaflets on sustainability and climate change to distribute in Oxford’s main shopping street. - Working with children in a local primary school on trees and tree-planting, leading to a community tree-planting event to which many of their families came. - We led a “Witness Group” session at Yearly Meeting in 2005. - More recently we ran an ‘EcoTeam’ course for Oxford Friends. - In February 2006 we organised an Operation Noah conference on ‘Climate change: what can Christians do?’ with churches in Oxford. We have spent several of our meetings this year on our most ambitious project so far: a proposal to set up a centre for sustainability in the meeting house. Meanwhile we continue our discussions – sometimes painful, at other times hilarious – on ways to ‘green’ our lives.	Home LWP Meetings

Living Witness Project

Oxford Friends Group on Sustainable Living

In early 2001 a small group of Oxford Friends organised an evening meeting on “How We Live”. Twenty three people came. We talked about our values and the way we express them in our lives. We agreed to meet again a month later and the meetings have kept going. Initially, we struggled with the gap between our visions of a sustainable world and the reality of our lives. It was hard to avoid talking about what we “should” be doing, but this just led to guilt and excuses. Eventually, we found an approach that seems to have worked. We stopped talking about “shoulds” and “oughts”, and concentrated instead on what we were going to do. A thought-shower threw up about 30 ideas for action, from setting up a green corner in the meeting house library to starting a car-sharing scheme. We asked who would take responsibility for making something happen, and 12 of the ideas were adopted. A year later, eight had been carried out. Over the following years, more ideas were added and more of the original 30 have been acted upon.

The group is open to all members and attenders in Oxford Meeting. We meet as a group once a month over a shared meal. We typically have 10-12 participants, although the list of Friends who attend from time to time includes about 30 names. Smaller groups meet frequently to work on ongoing projects or plan new ones. We arrange events for Oxford Meeting to celebrate our community and our world (seasonal feasts, ceilidhs, cabarets). Oxford Meeting has been strongly supportive, encouraging us to do an environmental audit of the meeting, and adopting an environmental policy statement developed by the group.

In 2004 we ran a weekend workshop on sustainable living for Quakers from around the Southeast. Its success encouraged us to plan further ‘outreach’ projects towards the wider community:

- Designing a series of leaflets on sustainability and climate change to distribute in Oxford’s main shopping street.

- Working with children in a local primary school on trees and tree-planting, leading to a community tree-planting event to which many of their families came.

- We led a “Witness Group” session at Yearly Meeting in 2005.

- More recently we ran an ‘EcoTeam’ course for Oxford Friends.

- In February 2006 we organised an Operation Noah conference on ‘Climate change: what can Christians do?’ with churches in Oxford.

We have spent several of our meetings this year on our most ambitious project so far: a proposal to set up a centre for sustainability in the meeting house. Meanwhile we continue our discussions – sometimes painful, at other times hilarious – on ways to ‘green’ our lives.

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