For Annual Session 2026, North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Working Group on Addressing Harm with Care will designate locations for affinity groups to provide safe gathering spaces for People of Color, LGBTQ+ people, neurodiverse people, and people with limited vision, hearing, or mobility. These groups will be self-organized by the participants.
The purpose of these groups is to provide opportunities for members to share their experiences and insights, where other participants will share common life experiences and general outlook, so that the members will not need to explain or justify their feelings. This supportive atmosphere is created for them to feel fully welcomed and included in Annual Session activities. For that reason we have also designated a Young Adult Friends (YAF) affinity group this year.
People who identify with more than one group are invited to choose the one that most deeply impacts their participation in Annual Session. People who do not identify with any of them are encouraged to absent themselves from the groups in order to support their flourishing from within.