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Friends United Meeting |
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June 2000
News from Friends United Meeting
New Superintendent for Jamaica Boys Home
Colin South To Direct Ramallah Friends Schools
Ramallah Girls Win All-Palestine Title
New Superintendent for Jamaica Boys Home
Howard A. Kelly has been named as the new superintendent for the Swift Purscell Boys Home. He comes from serving as a social worker in a boys home in Kingston. Prior to that he was a social worker at Kingston Public Hospital, an electrical welder, and a chemical and farm advisor. He also has had experience as a Child Care Officer at Boys Home. Howard has received training in business administration, medical social work, accounts, welding, plumbing and other areas.
Howard says, "For myself I believe that things must be done in a certain order and with some amount of discipline and honesty or fair play. To me each individual needs a second chance and some space to function and 'no man is an island.' Therefore we need to be a team player or person assisting in creating the change that is necessary for progress. My ambition is to serve and assist any human being in any way possible." He is an active Christian, worshipping with a Seventh Day Adventist church. As a volunteer, he has been a teen telephone counselor and member of the 4-H Club.
His wife is a registered nurse and a midwife, and they have two girls and a boy under 12 years of age. He started his employment with the Swift Purscell Boys Home on March 2, 2000.
Colin South To Direct Ramallah Friends Schools
Colin and Katherine South have been appointed as FUM representatives in Palestine, and Colin will serve as the new director of the Ramallah Friends Schools following the departure of Laurie and Marilyn Hadden this summer.
"The decision to accept this post has been the direct result of a feeling from the very beginning of the application process that this was where God wanted us now," wrote Colin South. "This feeling has been confirmed for us in the prayerful approach through the selection process of FUM and the warm and generous welcome that we have received from people in Palestine....
"We would wish to contribute, where appropriate, the experience that we have of lives wrestling with the values of peace, justice and reconciliation which have been fed from our Christian and Quaker traditions. We both recognize the challenges of living in a society which richly rubs between three faiths: Islam, Judaism and Christianity....We are learning of the political and religious divisions which have resulted historically and result still today in injustice, inhumanity and bloodshed. We feel the frustration and humiliation that local Palestinian people experience in the political solutions offered in this region. We offer our solidarity with that suffering and our recognition of the past and present responsibilities of the British and American peoples in supporting and determining unjust solutions to a human problem of providing people with a home and a livelihood. All of the joy, promise, prejudice, jealousy, pain and hope found in the stories of the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the Nazarene, lie still in this land."
Since 1986, Colin has served as general secretary of Christians Abroad, a service agency headquartered in London, England. Prior to that, Colin had fourteen years in secondary education, teaching chemistry in Ghana, Jamaica, and England, and from 1981-1986 serving as acting head of faculty and careers education coordinator at King Edward VIth School in Suffolk, England. Katherine South also has rich experience as a teacher of English, most recently as lecturer in English at Barking College. She received her Master's in English at the University of Michigan.
Ramallah Girls Win All-Palestine Title
The Ramallah Friends School girls basketball team edged rival, St. Joseph's, 25-24, to win the Ramallah cup on March 1. Two weeks later, representing Ramallah, Friends topped two teams to make it to the finals where they beat Bethlehem 18-10 to win the cup for all of Palestine. This is a first for the Ramallah Friends School girls basketball team.
FUM field staffer Holly Dhynes has been the head coach of the girls basketball team at the Friends School for two years. "This has been my first coaching experience," she says, "though I have played on various teams since I was 11 years old, as well as on a team currently in Jerusalem.
"High school basketball in Palestine is much different than in the States. Here there are no seasons, and no leagues, and only time to practice twice a week from the class workload. However, over the two years the girls improved dramatically and it really showed the day of the All-Palestine tournament."
The team includes 10th through 12th graders. Holly is a graduate of George Fox University and is jointly under appointment from Northwest Yearly Meeting and Friends United Meeting as an art teacher at the Friends School. She and her husband Allyn have also been actively involved with the Ramallah Friends Meeting.
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