Social Concerns Calendar September, 2009

Wed. Sept. 23rd. Social Concerns Next Meeting 6:30 (4th Wednesday).
Topics include: Youth activities, SPIHN dinner, ShareThePlate, Critter Connections, and others.
All interested members and friends are welcome.


Wed. Sept. 16th. Love, Knit & Crochet first meeting. For fellowship, creation of prayer shawls, baby blankets, etc. Open to youth and adults. Come to learn to knit or crochet and make warm scarves for the homeless, a blanket for a premature baby, a shawl for a sick person. Or join us for camaraderie while you work on your own projects. If you need to purchase your first knitting needles, buy size 10 or 11; crochet hook, buy size J or K. BEGINNERS, you do not need to bring yarn to the meeting, but you do need to bring hook or needles.
Next meeting: Oct. 21st, 6:30. Our fall group project is knitting scarves for the homeless.

Sunday, Sept. 20th Community Fair
*Launa Blackburn will speak on Park Hills Volunteer needs & opportunities from the pulpit for 5 minutes, and volunteers will wear special nametags “ask me about Park Hills”
Alice Sutton will speak at the Community Fair about Social Concerns as a whole and opportunities to volunteer.
*Ruth Stanton will share info on legislative efforts to improve public education and offer voter reg. & address updates via a table in the fellowship hall.

OCT 1st. Provide 1 dinner for SPIHN (Spartanburg Interfaith Hospitality Network): UU church commitment to Fernwood Baptist Church to provide one meal to the homeless family/families hosted. Although we have provided restaurant meals and take-out pizza most recently, we agreed we needed to do a low-budget meal, i.e., homemade mac&cheese, etc. How about a simple home-cooked meal and a great dessert?

Social Concerns Meeting Aug. 26, 2009 Minutes

Present: Alice Sutton (chair), Abby Fowler, Connie Godenick, Sally Hicks, Cindy Howe, Bobbie Schoss, P.K. Weiss. Unable to attend: Launa Blackburn, Teretha Fowler, Ruth Stanton, Ed Wilde
Purpose: To promote and coordinate social concerns efforts, especially to make participation easier for our church members

1) What is “Social Concerns”? Nationally, UU churches have committees, variously called Social Concerns, Social Action, and Social Justice, with efforts similar to ours, but with enough differences to make their statements interesting reading. They usually stress, as we do, “think globally and act locally.”

2) We reviewed our congregation’s activities in social concerns for the past year and previously, including continuing commitments:
*First Pride March: members of our congregation had a major responsibility for this wonderful event! Social concerns activities don’t have to spring from our committee.
*Adoption of Park Hills School: Launa Blackburn and PK Weiss spearhead this work. See end of minutes for August activity at ***.
*St. Luke’s Clinic: Teretha Fowler coordinates volunteer participation here one evening a month. If 1-2 additional people are interested in helping interview patients, this would be a plus. If 4-6 people were interested, we could take another evening.
*Total Ministries: Penny Hatchell calls Total Ministries when the food barrel is full. Previously, Meg Barnhouse sometimes gave food directly to needy applicants from the barrel, and Penny has continued that through the summer. We agreed that DON ROLLINS should decide whether he wished to continue this tradition or preferred that all applicants go direct to Total Ministries.
*SPIHN (Spartanburg Interfaith Hospitality Network): UU church commitment to Fernwood Baptist Church to provide one meal to the homeless family/families hosted. Their next event is Sept. 27-30. Although we have provided restaurant meals and take-out pizza most recently, we agreed we needed to do a low-budget meal, i.e., homemade mac&cheese, etc. How about a simple home-cooked meal and a great dessert?
*ShareThePlate: we all thought this was very worthwhile last year. We want to focus on this at our next meeting and make a thoughtful recommendation to the BOARD, so we have requested that the board make no decision on this until then.
*In previous years, groups, including youth groups, volunteered at Habitat for Humanity housebuilding and at Second Pres. Church serving free lunches, among others. We would like one or more YOUTH REPRESENTATIVES at our meetings to discuss what the youth would like to do or are already doing as volunteers. P.K. will discuss with Kathleen Anderson. Connie pulled her daughter, Laura, into our meeting to share her work with the Mayor’s Service Board, a volunteer group open to all high school youth in Spartanburg county—sounds like a great group! Thank you, Laura, for speaking to us!
Also, we'd like to invite any of the high schoolers who would like to participate in the Social Concerns committee at church to attend the next meeting: Wednesday, September 23 at 6:30 p.m. (at the church).

4) New Social Concerns Activities & Plans:
*Bobbie will present information on “Critter Connections” at the next meeting.
*Ruth Stanton would like to share info on legislative efforts to improve public education (http://www.goodbyeminimallyadequate.com/) and offer voter registration via a table in the foyer for 1-2 Sundays late in September. Our committee felt this was worthwhile, but was concerned that we had too much going on in September. We would like BOARD feedback on this.
*Connie shared her desire to help both our congregation and others become healthier through better nutrition. We health professionals will talk about this further and report at our next meeting.
*Alice shared her discussion with David Stack: we want to start a knitting/crocheting fellowship group open for people of all ages, those who want to learn either skill, or already know how & want to participate in making prayer shawls, baby blankets, or similar for charity, or simply knit and chat. Several committee members would like to join the group. Alice & David are both free only on the 3rd Wed. after dinner.

*Communications Issues: sharing information on what members are involved in and offering other opportunities is an ongoing need. Although monetary donations to charities are important, activities are more important. Alice will purchase a copy of Directory of Opportunities from the library and we will keep it in the Social Concerns Mailbox (please return it there if you look at it!)
(Sept. 15th note: DONE, but the directory was "borrowed"-- we hope it will make its way home to the mailbox.)
We discussed ways for committee members to communicate w/ Alice and for Alice to share that information via Unison, etc. and a webpage. We see the main function of the committee chair as handling communication.)

*Right now: Recruitment Plan for Park Hills: Since it is the beginning of the school year, we want to quickly recognize Park Hills volunteers who have been working there in August and give others the opportunity to get involved. We will make special nametags for that day for volunteers to wear that say “Ask me about Park Hills.”

***P.K. provided a list of August Park Hills volunteers who have held a “Back to School Breakfast” for faculty and staff, and put together information packets for 400 students and their parents. This was forwarded to Joyce. We have been contributing school supplies to the Park Hills barrel in the fellowship hall. Volunteers are needed for classroom help, lunch buddies, field trips, etc.