Imagine being greeted with a wide smile and sense of anticipation from your student when arriving at your classroom. This has been true for me – a wonderful experience of being a volunteer mentor — spending time with and getting to know my sweet kindergartener this past year. I’m grateful for the opportunity and I look forward to participating again in the fall. It’s an experience you don’t want to miss!
If you have one or two hours a week to spare and would like a chance to make a meaningful contribution in the community, consider joining our team of volunteer mentors at Elizabeth D. Redd Elementary School. Most of the students at Redd come from low-income families, primarily Latino or African-American. Many are immigrants. All could benefit from a consistent friendly presence in their lives.
Mentors commit to weekly visits with assigned students in kindergarten through 5th grade. You can choose the day and time to volunteer and which grade level you’d prefer to work with. We often meet during the students’ lunch break. Some of us meet with more than one student at a time, or meet individually with multiple students.
Whether playing games together, making art, reading or making conversation, we are helping students to build social and emotional skills that support their academic development. And we are having fun doing it!
We plan to hold an in-person orientation for new volunteers sometime in September. If you are interested in learning more about our experiences, please contact Lynda Perry, Kathryn Newland, or any of our other volunteers: Marjorie Bertolino, Mike Cluverius, Danni Kong, Mary Beth Martin, and Janet Thoroman. We will be welcoming at least two new volunteers this fall, and we hope to welcome you also.
This volunteer mentor opportunity is truly a valuable experience. Please join us!
Care is Resistance
Food Boxes for Our Neighbors: Health Brigade is collecting culturally appropriate food boxes for Latine and Afghan immigrant patients and families. Many families are experiencing a new level of food insecurity as they are avoiding grocery stores and public spaces out of concern for increased ICE presence. These boxes can offer relief and a reminder that people care.
Lists of items requested for each culture are on each box. Please bring any thing you can to Meeting and place it in the boxes outside the Meeting room. Name brands or generic products are welcome. Rhonda Ligon will collect your donations and develop the boxes for each family to be delivered to Health Brigade.
Items may be purchased in many grocery stores. It is extremely helpful to the immigrant community to support a local business, such as Arco Iris Latino Market or Mis Pais Mart for Latin items, or Mantu Market and Watan Market for Afghan products. There are Latin and Afghan wishlists to be found on Amazon and Walmart online sites.
If you have been looking for ways to stand with our immigrant neighbors as they face harassment and possible arrest and deportation, the Immigrant Solidarity Informal Committee (under the care of the Race and Racial Justice Team) has developed this guide to help you find volunteer opportunities in the Richmond area in immigrant-led and immigrant-facing organizations. Contact information is provided if you are led to pursue one of these opportunities.
The Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations to Indigenous Peoples was established in February 2025 to explore and recommend ways Richmond Friends Meeting (RFM) can make a meaningful financial contribution—no less than $5,000—in the form of reparations to one or more Indigenous tribes. The committee is also tasked with considering the Meeting’s historical land use, its relationship to Indian boarding schools, and its historical connections with local tribes. In August 2025, our charge expanded to include recommending how RFM can “live in right relationship” with Indigenous communities into the future.
The committee consists of four members who have met regularly, conducted historical research on RFM, its predecessor meetings, and Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), and learned from other Quaker communities’ experiences with reparative work. We engaged with experts —including Paula Palmer, Susan Marcus, and the RFM Race and Racial Justice Team—and reached out to several Virginia tribes: the Monacan, Chickahominy (Eastern Division), and Rappahannock.
Committee research found no evidence of direct harm committed by RFM against Indigenous peoples. However, we acknowledge that RFM—as part of the wider community of Virginia colonizers and their descendants—benefits from a long history of Indigenous dispossession. The report summarizes how colonial doctrines (Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius) enabled European land seizures, how colonial treaties were violated, and how state and federal policies led to multigenerational trauma through land loss, forced assimilation, Indian boarding schools, racism, and ongoing violence, including the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Tribes have shared several ways that RFM can meaningfully engage:
Financial reparations should be guided by tribes’ stated needs and by relationship-building, rather than assumptions.
Creating an ongoing fund to support Indigenous-focused education and initiatives may help RFM retain and improve relationships with tribal groups. To ground our reparations work in genuine understanding, we recommend providing educational programs on Indigenous history, issues, and relational practices for RFM. These may include guest speakers, workshops, films, or book discussions. Such learning is essential for informed decisions about reparations, land or labor acknowledgments, and any future statements or minutes.
Purpose and Charge of the Committee
The Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations to Indigenous Peoples (“the committee”) was formed in February 2025 at the recommendation of the Race and Racism Ad Hoc Committee and subsequently approved by Richmond Friends Meeting (RFM). The charge of the committee is to recommend a significant financial contribution of no less than $5,000 as a form of reparations to one or more indigenous tribes. As recommended by the Race and Racism Ad Hoc, the committee is guided by the following components:
The committee’s charge was expanded to include the following recommendation at the August 2025 meeting with attention to business:
The committee reports to the Clerk of Meeting and consists of four members – Barb Adams, Steven Austin, Kathleen Morgan, and Katy Rugg. Since its inception, the committee has been meeting regularly, approximately every two weeks online. We have researched and discussed the history of RFM (and its predecessor meetings) and Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) in their dealings with Indian tribes, the status of Virginia tribes today, and what it means to repair damaged relationships with
indigenous peoples. The historical research conducted by this committee was not exhaustive but sufficient to gain a better understanding of our involvement, or lack thereof, with tribes.
We have learned from other Quaker Meetings and organizations about their path to reparations, such as Baltimore Yearly Meeting who issued an apology and reparations to the Pawnee Nation. In addition to our internal work, Plum Cluverius from the Race and Racial Justice Team has joined us for a meeting to offer their support, Rita Willet provided a deeper dive on the history that the Race and Racism Ad Hoc presented in the fall of 2024, Paula Palmer joined us for a meeting (Paula is a Quaker and director of Toward Right Relationship and has spent her personal and professional life working with Indigenous people in Costa Rica and now in the US.), Susan Marcus of BYM also joined us to share about BYM’s experience with reparations and working with tribal groups, and we have formally reached out to multiple tribes including the Monacan, Chickahominy (eastern division), and the Rappahannock to better understand and learn about any historic relationships between Quakers/RFM and their tribe, in addition to building and improving our relationships with these local tribes.
We have not yet come across any evidence of direct harm to indigenous peoples by RFM or its predecessor meetings. However, we are, as modern Virginia citizens, the beneficiaries of the general history of European colonization policies and actions. That history includes genocide (through vectors of communicable diseases and warfare); land acquired by less than scrupulous means, including intimidation, violent force, outright theft, forced social and cultural assimilation, and other social and political pressures aimed at destroying tribal sovereignty.
Two Eurocentric and Christian principles provided the foundation for confiscating indigenous land in the New World: The Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius. These principles were first formulated by Pope Alexander VI who issued four papal bulls to justify Spain’s claim to all of the land in the New World. The Doctrine of Discovery supported Spain’s claim because they were the first European nation to discover it. Terra nullius, meaning “vacant land,” was the Church’s declaration that non-Christians’ claim to the land was inferior because non-European indigenous people did not own land in the same way that Europeans did. The land rights of the indigenous peoples who had occupied that land for thousands of years, and their very lives, could therefore be voided and preempted by the King of Spain because the land was declared to have no true master or inhabitants and the King’s claim was superior to that of indigenous peoples by virtue of his being a Christian monarch.
This is important to understand because other European nations adopted these same principles. In the case of Virginia, the King of England gave out grants of land to colonists with virtually no regard for the indigenous people already residing there. No consideration was paid to any indigenous tribes for taking their land in Virginia. Treaties were made between tribes and the Virginia colonial government that supposedly ensured tribes’ rights to their land in perpetuity. However, these treaties were repeatedly broken resulting in complete or substantial loss of their traditional territories. Indigenous rights agreed to in solemn treaties are still threatened, including the rights to, and the promised security of, tribal lands.
Colonialist policies and policies of the United States’ government have had a negative, multi- generational impact on Native communities in our State, including: loss of land; loss of culture (especially language and religion) through forced assimilation; poverty; alcohol and drug abuse; and, broken family and tribal relationships because of a decades-long Federal policy promoting the use of boarding schools as a means of separating indigenous children from their families and tribal communities and pressuring them to assimilate into white society; lack of educational opportunities preparing indigenous people for participation in the national and global economies; racism and prejudice; and violence against Indian individuals and communities, especially gender-based violence perpetrated against indigenous women. The relatively new movement “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” has been bringing increased attention to this last issue. These are just some of the problems that are still suffered by Indian tribes as a result of centuries of oppression and genocide.
The tribes are eager for non-indigenous people to know that they have survived, in spite of the destructive Colonial and Federal government policies mentioned above. They remind us of that with the refrain “We are still here!” They are still fighting for their sovereignty, for their treaty rights, to defend their lands and other natural resources, to educate and provide housing and healthcare for their tribal members, and for governmental acknowledgment of their continuing tribal existence.
Virginia tribes seek non-Indians to partner with them in building a resilient future for their tribal members, built upon mutual respect and interdependence. As a committee, tribes have already told us about a number of projects for which they seek the help of volunteer labor and, in some cases, financial assistance. One of the easiest ways to assist a nearby tribe is to volunteer to help at their meetings, reservation clean up days, reforesting projects, festivals, or powwows. Some local intertribal meetings in Virginia are open to the public and provide an excellent opportunity to educate oneself about issues important to indigenous peoples in our region. The Rappahannock Tribe has, for example, asked for assistance with researching the fate of some of their tribal children who were taken from their parents to attend the Federal government’s Indian boarding school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We have found that tribes are open to financial assistance on various projects
The Committee believes that it will be critical to our goal of right relationship with the indigenous peoples of Virginia and beyond to better educate Meeting members and attenders on these topics. This would also help in our goal of discerning reparations/what projects to support. We are thinking in terms of offering educational events twice a year. These educational opportunities may include inviting indigenous and non-indigenous guest speakers, hosting workshops offered by Quakers who have worked closely with indigenous peoples, showing films followed by group discussion, reading books on topics of interest to indigenous peoples, etc. The education programs will help our Meeting be a more informed ally to indigenous people. We are also considering the establishment of an additional, ongoing fund for enhancing our understanding and support of indigenous peoples. A true understanding of what reparations might mean or signify to indigenous people – and to Quakers – and what form they might take comes as a result of deeper education, exploration and relationship-building by our committee and community. Well-meaningness and intention is not a solid enough foundation for our actions. This growth process would also apply to possible Meeting efforts towards land and labor acknowledgement and any statement or minute of belief, concern or solidarity.
In 2024, Richmond Friends Meeting adopted a Minute making understanding and acting on issues related to race and racism “a strong, clear priority” for our community. That work began in earnest with the adoption of an action plan in early 2025. A newly created Racial Justice Team consisting of Plum Cluverius, Margaret Edds, and Levi Goren was charged with oversight. The action plan made clear that addressing racial issues is a communal commitment and responsibility. As the plan advises, “Each standing committee will make racial justice a priority in doing its work.”
In assessing the first year of action under the plan, the Race and Racial Justice Team believes that a commitment to racial justice became a stronger and more visible priority for Richmond Friends Meeting during 2025. Team members feel that the community has engaged broadly with the commitments made in 2024. Multiple committees have accepted the challenge to better understand racial differences and find ways of addressing racial injustice. (See Below) As recommended by the ad hoc Committee on Race and Racism, which developed the action plan, we have engaged with other faith communities doing similar work through the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. We have served less privileged children through a mentoring program at Redd Elementary School in South Richmond. And we have encouraged deeper personal growth through connection with Coming Together Virginia, a multi-racial group focused on better communication across race.
Meanwhile, the newly formed ad hoc Committee on Reparations to Indigenous Peoples has delved deeply into the history and current status of Virginia’s indigenous tribes. At their request, RFM expanded the ad hoc’s mission to one of seeking out ways to live in right relationship with those tribes. This is deep and ongoing work.
We welcome the enthusiasm and depth of commitment applied to these and other initiatives, even as discernment to find a right way forward sometimes entailed struggle and conflicting viewpoints. Ironically, we realize that RFM’s deeper connection to racial justice has occurred as much of the nation is dialing back on its commitment to equity and diversity, due to both pressure and coercion from the current administration in Washington. Awareness of that retrenchment deepens our resolve to spread Quaker messages of love and non-violence as we strive for a world freed of injustice and oppression.
Even as we celebrate progress on those aims, we remain attuned to unanswered questions: how deeply has the work saturated Meeting as a whole? Are we engaging with each other honestly and personally around issues of race, particularly when they involve members and attenders of our own Meeting? How do we confront racial wounding both within Richmond Friends Meeting and the larger community? What more might we be doing to address structural racism in our city and state? And, finally, how do more members of the Meeting community become engaged in this vital work?
We see that there is much work to be done in arriving at shared understandings and answers to these questions. We view our 2025 efforts as a beginning, far from an end. As one Friend put it, “We’ve started the conversation. We’ve lived into it, but I don’t think we’ve lived up to it completely.” We recognize that, as cruelty toward immigrants and migrants accelerates and anger flares, we will be challenged in new and difficult ways to follow the teaching, drawn from John Woolman, to “let love be the first motion.”
A two-day workshop (rescheduled to March 7 and 14), facilitated by Coming Together Virginia, will focus on having “Courageous Conversations in Multi-Racial Settings.” The Racial Justice Team is heartened by garnering capacity sign-ups for the workshop and hopes that this event might kickstart a deeper focus on a communal, internal awareness of race-related matters in 2026, even as we continue to grow a more visible and engaged outward focus.
The team remains aware that the action plan approved by Meeting calls for programs related to Asian and Latino Americans. It is our intention to move forward with those programs once the Courageous Conversations workshop is complete.
A brief (and incomplete) overview of some of the race and racial-justice-related actions within Richmond Friends Meeting during 2025:
This is an incomplete listing of race-related activities, but it suggests the depth of commitment within Richmond Friends Meeting to engaging with matters related to race and racial justice. It is our hope and expectation that the work will expand and deepen as we move forward into 2026 and beyond. As Levi Goren departs to become Clerk of Meeting, we welcome Monti Datta to the Race and Racial Justice team.