Above Board: Lessons in Stewardship
When I was young, I went to a Quaker camp in Medford, NJ. Each day, a bell would ring, alerting us that it was mealtime. We would spring into action to find a piece of trash that served as our entry ticket into the dining hall.
This may sound like an odd trade—trash for food—but it taught me that we each have a role to play in caring for our surroundings. As a young person, this was one of the most explicit ways I learned about stewardship, a value that is deeply held by Quakers.
Fast forward to 2021. Corey Becker ’22, who was president of the Environmentalism club at the time, created a Climate Action Plan proposal and sent it to me in my role as clerk of Friends Select’s board of trustees. The opening paragraph began: “In order to embrace our responsibility as a Quaker institution to practice stewardship and integrity towards our environment, we propose that Friends Select assemble a climate action plan to guide our community’s future efforts in sustainability.”
Corey called on us to step up, be accountable, and live our values. Happily, we weren’t starting from scratch, as many students, faculty, and staff have been doing this work for years. On a board level, we had already decided to prioritize environmental concerns in Transformation Campaign projects on campus.
The Climate Action Plan proposal led us to create a Sustainability committee of key community stakeholders, add environmental stewardship to the Advance Friends Select strategic plan, and commit to carbon neutrality. I joined the Sustainability committee and found creativity, expertise, passion, and excitement to be working together on these issues. We have representation from almost every constituency at FSS, which increases our impact and reach.
With the feedback and support of the Sustainability committee and the administration, the board enthusiastically and wholeheartedly approved the addition of Environmental Sustainability as the fifth pillar to Advance Friends Select this year. By adding to the strategic plan, we have officially made environmental sustainability an institutional priority so that we have accountability and focused attention. We see ourselves in the larger context of Philadelphia, which is why we are committed to creating a plan and strategy to align with the city’s goal for carbon neutrality by 2050.
Thinking back to when I was a kid helping to clean up my camp one piece of trash at a time, and now thinking about how Friends Select is taking significant steps toward addressing climate change, I am reminded that my sphere of influence has changed. I also think about Corey, as an upper school student, using his sphere of influence to push FSS forward on climate action. This is what stewardship means.
