Love Your Neighbour: Fundraiser for Palestine

Selly Oak Quakers invite you, and your family and friends, to a special evening as part of Quaker Week 2025. Children are really welcome.

We'll hear stories from Quakers with strong connections to Palestine and share our own experiences around the theme for Quaker Week 2025 - 'Love Your Neighbour'.

There will be a meal with flavours from the Middle East. This year's Quaker Week includes Green Feast, an opportunity to think about our neighbours in a wider sense - the animals that we share the earth with and the earth itself. If they are our neighbours, how does this change our relationship with them?

Programme for the evening:

6.30 pm Food and music

7.15 pm Speakers and discussion

8.00 pm Refreshments and a chance to chat with neighbours, new and old, accompanied by music.

Quaker Week is a time to celebrate the Quaker community within our wider communities. Spiritual journeys are as as varied as the people who travel them. So, there is a warm welcome to people of all faiths and none joining us on Saturday 4th October.

Help us deepen our understanding by sharing your thoughts and experiences on 'Love Your Neighbour'.

Outside Up Trio, who initiated this fundraiser, will be entertaining us with their creative takes on jazz favourites that reflect the purpose of the evening, with Peter Houtman on Piano, Adrian Litvinoff on Bass and Wal Warmington on Drums.

Our speaker for the evening is Debby Flack, now a Quaker for over 20 years. She followed the occupation in Palestine eversince she was a teenager and has become more actively engaged in working for justice as a Quaker. In early 2023, Debby visited the Occupied Palestinian Territories helping to rebuild a demolished home and spending three months in the West Bank as a human rights monitor as part of the Ecumenical Accompaniers Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).

We are fundraising for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and EAPPI. MAP provide medical aid under very difficult conditions while looking to the long-term development of the Palestinian healthcare system. EAPPI, a World Council of Churches programme, recruits Ecumenical Accompaniers, who serve in the field for three months, accompanying local people and communities, offering a protective presence, and witnessing their daily struggles and hopes. EAPPI is guided by “principled impartiality”: it takes no side in the conflict nor discriminates against anyone. On the other hand, it is not neutral in terms of human rights and respect for international humanitarian law.

This event is free but please register to help us with catering.

Donations to MAP and EAPPI will be collected on the day in cash or with our card machine. Alternatively, you can donate in your own time through their websites.

If you have dietary requirements, please drop the organiser an email. Food will be vegan.

Selly Oak Meeting is an Acessible building.

There are regular buses and trains to Selly Oak.

We have bike racks available and parking for those who need to use a car.

The driveway to the Quaker House is marked by a blue sign soon after the traffic lights where Oak Tree Lane crosses the Bristol Road going south.