Buffalo and Orchard Park Friends Meetings are collaborating with Friends Peace Teams North America to start a new Buffalo Justice and Peace Library!
The hope is to organize community volunteers to nurture personal relationships across diverse communities in Buffalo, as we are one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Sharing skills and knowledge goes a long way in creating just, peaceful communities and families.
We plan to purchase a mobile library collection of quality storybooks on the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) justice and peace themes. Books will be selected from the Friends Peace Libraries collection and local recommendations for pre-reading to emergent and early reading levels.
Whitney Dean has offered to coordinate the library and events, to give us volunteer opportunities to work with people from various neighborhoods. She will organize Read Aloud Story Times with one-on-one or small group read aloud sessions for young children with volunteer teens, adults, and seniors for 1.5 - 2 hours twice a month, who receive training in reading aloud. Alternatives to Violence Project facilitators trained for justice and peace will work with her to organize Power of Goodness AVP mini-workshops organized around a theme and a story for 1.5 -2 hours every month or two. Nadine Hoover, Michael Tritto, and Da’Von McCune from the Buffalo AVP Justice and Peace facilitators volunteered to supervise her work.
Friends Peace Teams North America has offered the Justice and Peace Library book recommendations, use of their LibraryThing catalog account, and personnel management approach. Buffalo and Orchard Park Quaker Meetings will provide books to start. We will supervise the Justice and Peace Library Coordinator, raise the necessary funds, and report to Friends Peace Teams. We will invite other churches, civic groups, or organizations to join us to add books, recruit volunteers, offer space, and publicize to interested children and families.