The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a national organization formed by the Quaker Society of Friends during World War I to promote peace and social justice. AFSC national headquarters are in Philadelphia, with regional and local area offices located across the United States. In 1964, the Chicago Regional Office began planning a subsidiary office, the Madison Area Committee. These plans were developed to strengthen AFSC's presence in the Midwest, particularly its efforts to promote conscientious objection and organize draft counseling in response to the Vietnam War. John Anderson was the first chair of the Madison Area Committee. Jack Gleason was the first director of the Youth Services Division, and Betty Boardman coordinated activities within the community.
The Madison Area Committee office opened in 1966, and was organized into the national program divisions of Conscientious Objection, Youth Services, Peace Education, Community Relations, and International Affairs. During its first decade the Madison Committee emphasized its Conscientious Objection Program, which was active in the distribution of literature, draft resistance activities, tracking draft law changes, maintaining liaisons with related organizations, and providing draft counseling for high school and college students.
In 1966, the AFSC College and Universities Program formed a Friends of the AFSC group on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, which coordinated arrangements for AFSC campus activities. The Madison Area Committee also founded the Madison Draft Counseling and Information Center (DCIC) in 1968. The DCIC became an independent organization in 1970 in part to allow the Madison AFSC office to devote itself to expanding its conscientious objection programs across Wisconsin.
In addition to conscientious objection, AFSC's High School and College Programs encouraged youth to engage in community, national, and international service opportunities through AFSC's national Summer Projects Abroad, U.S. Summer Projects, and Volunteer International Service Assignment (VISA) programs. In these programs high school and college students volunteered in community work camps across the nation to address issues of housing, employment, education, and poverty. College students also participated in international service programs to improve conditions in Vietnam, Nigeria, and many other countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
A part of the peace education program of the Madison office was Peaceful Alternatives Through Non-Violent Action (PATNA), a program founded by AFSC member Paul Fleer in 1970 to educate local communities on peaceful and effective ways of accomplishing social justice. Eventually PATNA became a separate organization. Seminars, classes screening of non-violent films, and the distribution of literature were also a part of the committee's Peace Education efforts. AFSC also initiated Madison projects that addressed welfare, prison reform, and local living conditions. Since the end of the Vietnam War, the Madison Area Committee has continued its efforts towards peace and social justice.
