The Moorestown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends will hold its Loving Our Earth Fair along Main Street from 1 to 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 21.
“One of the strong principles of the Friends is stewardship of the Earth …” explained Maria Esche, member of the Moorestown Monthly Meeting. The event will be hosted by the Witness in the World Committee, whose job is to communicate the Friends’ presence and principles to the wider community.
“We know that for most of us, dealing with the ideas of climate change and environmental damage can be so overwhelming and frankly so depressing sometimes, that it’s easy to feel paralyzed and not know what to do,” Esche said.
The fair will offer opportunities for actions attendees can take that to positively impact the Earth. Table guides will inform residents on seed sharing, composting, recycling, native plants, wildlife gardening and pollinator-friendly landscaping.
“At a community level, we are bringing in a couple of organizations,” Esche noted. “We have STEM (Save the Environment of Moorestown), and their representatives will be there to talk about how, over the years, STEM has saved so much open space in Moorestown.
“We’re also having the Rancocas Nature Center come, and they have a lot of environmental education programs for children, particularly, but they also have things for adults,” she added.
The Society of Friends is also interested in teaching people about environmental justice, given that while environmental damage affects all of us, it disproportionately affects people of low income and communities of color, according to Esche.
“The (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency has developed a computer program that analyzes this with data right down to the neighborhood level,” she said. “On their website, they have something called EJScreen and you can find out just how different neighborhoods compare environmentally.”
Attendees will be also learning more about EJScreen at the fair, as well as Green Amendments – often called environmental rights amendments – that are part of a state’s constitution. Likening rights of religious expression and speech to the right to clean air and water, the amendments emphasize environmental health and safety as being a part of our basic civil liberties, according to the site for the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.
“As of now, there’s only three states that have passed it, Pennsylvania, New York and Montana, but New Jersey has it in there to vote on, they’ve got it in the pipeline,” Esche pointed out. “People can learn more about it and if they care to sign any petition, they can.”
In case of rain, the event will be held inside the Friends’ social room at 118 E. Main St. Earth Day is on Monday, April 22, and Esche looks forward to a beautiful day for the fair.
“ … It’s natural for us to save and protect what we love, and all we want to do is remind people of how beautiful our Earth is and how much there is to save and how worthwhile it would be to do the little bit that we can do to save the Earth,” she said.
“So that’s why we called it Loving Our Earth Fair.”
