After the Arab Spring uprisings we now turn to watch young democracies emerge. Ahmed Salahedin Ali and Mahitab Al Gilani experienced both the protest at Tahrir Square and the first elections in Egypt. FCNL's Program Assistants went to meet these Egyptian activists.

Semper Fidelis-often shortened to Semper Fi-is a Latin phrase meaning "always faithful." It's most commonly known as the motto for the United States Marine Corps. The phrase has taken on a new meaning for me as details about the poisoning of Marines and Marine Corps families who lived at Camp Lejeune, the United States' largest Marine base, have come to light. For decades, the Marine Corps dumped toxic waste in Lejeune which leached into the groundwater, affecting as many as one million Marines and their families.

For me, this story is more than an abstraction. I was born at Lejeune in the 1980s. When I first read about this story in The Washington Post, it hit me right in the gut. Is this me? Could I be sick? How could this happen?

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has approved legislation that would reverse President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. Politicians and pundits alike have been promoting the pipeline because there is a lot of profit to be made. However, in order for the project to be approved they have to convince the American people of all of the hollow benefits that the pipeline would provide. Every single one of those benefits is a deception. Let’s take a closer look.

This weekend Matt Southworth and I packed our bags and took our excitement about the upcoming young adult Spring Lobby Weekend on the road, touring the Tri-College Consortium of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore.

At Swarthmore, we worshipped with young Friends in a beautiful meetinghouse, and Matt shared the story of his first experience lobbying--at Spring Lobby Weekend 2006, lobbying to end the Iraq war, in which he fought. Speaking about Spring Lobby Weekend after meeting for worship brought a gravity and a power to the conversation that sometimes can get muffled in an office environment.

In 2007, the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo received a lot of media attention. Prominent actors and U.S. officials traveled to the DRC and were shocked by the appalling situations in the hospitals and the testimonies of the rape victims. Their shock and concern was justified; rape and sexual violence were and are a horrific tactic of terror in the Congolese conflict.

This wave of shock was followed by a wave of financial support. Hospitals received equipment and medicine to aid rape victims. The international response to support victims of sexual and gender-based violence was astonishing. Health programs have increased the survival rates for victims, and charities provide many victims with means to supplement their income and gain access to basic services if they have experienced exclusion from their families and communities.

This blog post is a special edition guest blog written by Asha Warner, who volunteered at FCNL this winter. One of her projects was to call all of our Letter Writing Coordinators to learn how to improve our letter writing campaign. She reflects on the experience of talking with our coordinators and hearing their stories.

In returning to Washington after a month-long trip to Kenya, one conclusion from my time there has become all the more clear: as Kenyan Friends continue to empower their communities toward peace in the upcoming year, those of us in the U.S. should ensure that our country’s policy supports, not undermines, the success of their programs and others like them. With 2012 already here, the countdown to Kenya’s elections has begun – and now is the time to make peaceful prevention a U.S. priority, sooner rather than later.