Children's Meeting

Extracts of a report from Children and Young People Committee

We are a small but enthusiastic group, and we cater for a small but enthusiastic group of children.  We try to encourage the children to be integrated with the main Meeting by putting their handiwork on a table for everyone to see, telling the adults what the children have been doing, handing out things which they have cooked, and sometimes by singing when they come in to main Meeting and getting everyone to join in.  It often happens that we are amazed that what the children have been doing upstairs has been mirrored by the ministry in the main Meeting; for instance last week the children had been learning about conflict and how to deal with it, and ministry in Meeting had dealt with the same issues.

The things the children tell us they enjoy doing are stories, games, painting, making things, dressing up, cooking, music making and going on trips. Sometimes the sessions are run as "one offs", but we often have themes; over the past year these have included Quaker history, Quaker values and beliefs, and more recently Other countries.

The children raised money for the Young Friend's Appeal for Akany Avoko, a centre for destitute women and children in Madagascar, and we are hoping to do some more fund raising with them later this year.  They enjoy making and selling things, and it is good for them to think about helping people who are less fortunate than they are, but at the same time we do not want the Children's Meeting to be seen primarily as a way of making money, so we try to have a balanced programme for them.  We hope that some of the activities which the children do either are or will become traditions.  These include the annual Easter Egg hunt (which we have now had twice), the Christmas party including a visit from Santa (which we introduced for the first time for many years last Christmas at the request of someone who is now grown-up but had happy memories of Meeting Christmas parties as a child), making a Harvest loaf and the Cradle Roll to welcome babies and new children to the Meeting.

Organizing the Children's activities can sometimes seem like hard work, and things do not always go exactly according to plan, but it is also very rewarding. It is our belief that the Meeting is privileged to have the children and enriched by their presence.