Values to Action: Ninth Graders Practice Community

The Friends Foundations course—co-led by CPEJ—begins with big questions, then asks students to practice answering them with care.

Designed as a ninth-grade touchstone, Friends Foundations invites students to explore the intersections of Quaker practice, citizenship, service, and identity, and to consider how values like equality, peace, and stewardship can move from belief into action. This year’s culminating projects reflected that charge: students researched urgent issues, listened for complexity, and then built tangible responses meant to inform, connect, and support their peers.

Across final presentations, students used art activism to challenge stigma around gender and sexuality and to elevate stories from the border—work rooted in empathy, narrative, and the power of witnessing. Other groups focused on climate action, turning learning into dialogue and awareness-building around renewable energy, litter, and marine pollution in New York City. In a different register of service, students addressed food insecurity and immigration through letter-writing initiatives, practicing civic engagement as a form of solidarity and care.

Taken together, the projects offered a portrait of ninth graders stepping into the work of community: asking better questions, holding multiple truths at once, and designing actions—large and small—that create room for others to learn, participate, and belong.