Jens Braun (Old Chatham Meeting), Clémence Mershon (Lake Erie Yearly Meeting and a former teacher at Westtown), and Newton Garver (Buffalo Meeting) will be traveling to Bolivia in October 2005 to visit with students, teachers, administrators, committee members, and BQE-Bo Coordinator Bernabé Yujra.

Bernabé has tried twice to visit here in the US, but each time his visa application has been denied. We're determined to make the next attempt successful, and are currently planning for him to visit here in September of 2006.


	Newton Garver and Friends at a Parents and Pastors meeting, Colegio Emmanuel in El Alto Click image to view an enlargement.

US members of BQEF visited Bolivia in the fall of 2004, where they worked with Bolivian Friends to discern together how best to further strengthen Bolivian-Northern Quaker fellowship through enhancing Bolivian Quaker education. Newton Garver, Vickey Kaiser, and Bernabé Yujra met with the computer, English, and scholarship committees, as well as the scholarship recipients and school administrators, to plan the next phase. For more on this work among Friends, see related articles in our January 2005 newsletter (2.6 MB PDF file, requiring Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Quaker Study Tours continues to arrange trips to Bolivia and Peru, organized and led by Barbara Flynn, a Friend from California. For more information on these trips, visit the Treasures of the Andes Web site.