With Trayce Peterson feeling called to place her considerable talent in service to direct action social work (thank you for your service, Trayce), FGC is excited to announce that Holly Baldwin has been hired as our part-time Welcoming Friend Project Assistant!

With Trayce Peterson feeling called to place her considerable talent in service to direct action social work (thank you for your service, Trayce), FGC is excited to announce that Holly Baldwin has been hired as our part-time Welcoming Friend Project Assistant!

Before coming to FGC, Holly served as the Director of the Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston for 10 years. She was very active with New England Yearly Meeting’s Young Adult Friends community for several years, and went to the World Gathering of Young Friends in 2005, the Kenyan edition of the WGYF (also in 2005), and a Quaker youth conference as an FGC representative in 2009. Holly is a member of Fresh Pond Monthly Meeting in Cambridge, MA, though she is currently attending Albuquerque Monthly Meeting in Albuquerque, NM. She recently made the decision to move from Massachusetts to New Mexico.

“I’m living in the southwest after most of a life in New England,” she said via email. “I am enjoying experiencing a different landscape and culture, and also opening myself to how God is calling me outside of the familiar grooves of life as I knew it.”

As our Welcoming Friend Project Assistant, Holly will create a collection of resources, an online training module, and a workshop at the FGC Gathering in July 2019 that are all geared toward helping Friends in monthly and yearly meetings adopt inclusive welcoming practices. Additionally, she will create a community of practice and a volunteer leadership team that will carry the work after the initial project phases have come to an end.

“I carry a concern for deepening our experiences in Friends meetings, and am working with my meeting to identify and support a growing leading to lovingly encourage Friends to deeper risk-taking.”

Outside of her work with FGC, Holly leads workshops and retreats for Friends and others on topics including (though not limited to) community building, spiritual discernment, spiritual deepening, and clerking.

Please join us in welcoming Holly to FGC!

UPDATE: In 2019, Holly transitioned to working with the Development team at FGC. She is currently serving as Development Associate and is working on Planned Giving.