Peace Chapters
College and university groups, Sabbath school classes, and others can put their commitment to human rights, peacemaking, and social justice into practice by forming their own local chapters of the Adventist Peace Fellowship. Once chartered, APF chapters can apply for financial assistance through our organization. They can use the APF website as a platform to raise awareness about their activities. They can also help to shape the character and identity of the APF as a global organization since we are only as strong, as dedicated, and as engaged as those individuals in our network committed to practical actions at the grass-roots level. To form an APF chapter:
1. Organize a Core Team
APF chapters begin with small networks of friends, fellow students, neighbors, co-workers, or church members deciding they want to work together on peace and justice issues under the APF umbrella. You should organize a core team of 3-5 people to assume initial leadership of your chapter. College and university chapters should identify a faculty sponsor.
2. Identify a Campaign
Once you have formed your core team, you should choose an APF campaign (or campaigns) to focus on in your work. Our campaigns are: peacemaking and reconciliation; care for creation; Sabbath economics; health and human rights; freedom of conscience; racial and gender justice.
3. Get Chartered
After your local group 1) has established its leadership team (which should be based upon principles of transparency, accountability, and inclusivity), 2) has successfully recruited new members, and 3) has begun work on at least two practical actions within your community with a long-term commitment to ongoing work, you are ready to be chartered!
You should contact us by email, providing a brief report of your activities and a request to be a chartered. Your letter will be reviewed by our Board of Directors and on acceptance your group will be listed on our website as an official APF chapter. The APF will support your work in whatever ways we practically can. To remain an active APF chapter, you should send us an annual report of your activities that includes a request for renewal of your charter. All APF chapters should work within the broad framework of principles outlined on our campaign pages and with accountability to the APF network as a whole. Charter membership is a privilege that may be suspended or revoked at any time from chapters that depart from APF principles.