Thank you to everyone who came to this year's Intergenerational Spring Seminar! The Seminar Statement can be viewed here. We'll be posting shortly photos and updates for next year. If you have comments or photos you'd like to share, please send them to springseminar@uu-uno.org and we'll post them soon!
In the meantime, stay updated on the work of the UU-UNO Climate Change Task Force by visiting its portal.
Pride+Love in Uganda 06: What is our obligation to LGBT Ugandans?
Like the Jews, the LGBT community in Uganda is a global minority, a family, a tribe. When one part of the community is under threat of state and extra-judicial violence as we witnessed here in Uganda, the global LGBT community is called to act. What we do should be directed by the Ugandan LGBT community, but all the LGBT citizens of Uganda we saw, in the hundreds, asked for international support.
In proposing to imprison LGBTs, their friends, families, doctors, and teachers, the UN Member State of Uganda threatens to be in violation of multiple treaties. If the anti-homosexuality bill should ...
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Become an Envoy
What is a UU-UNO Envoy?
An Envoy acts to represents the UU United Nations Office within their local congregation. They connect the congregation to the UU United Nations Office and get important information on current UN activities. They receive information on our program initiatives and then plan events in their congregation to promote the program. Envoys are extremely valuable to the UU United Nations Office because they are the link between the office and the global UU community.
If your congregation does not already have an Envoy, consider becoming one. Or better yet, consider forming an Envoy Committee.
To join the team, ...
Every Child is Our Child
More than 14 million children under 15 in Africa have lost one or both parents to AIDS. According to the United Nations, that number will rise to at least 35 million children by the year 2010. The scope of this human tragedy is overwhelming. What can one person, or one congregation, do? Plenty! We, UU-UNO members, have begun by making these children our priority.
As part of UU-UNO mission, Every Child is Our Child Program focuses on children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS and works toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of universal primary education, fighting HIV/AIDS, reducing hunger and poverty, and promoting gender equality. This effort ...
The Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office (UU-UNO) invites to celebrate 2010 UN Sunday in honor of the founding of the UN on October 24th, 1945. The 2010 United Nation Sunday packet, “Ethical Aspects of Climate Change” is available on our website with everything you need to plan a UN Sunday service.
If your congregation has a UU-UNO envoy, he/she/ze has already been sent a letter with this information. It is our hope that you can use this resource to assist you in working with your envoy to plan the UN Sunday service for your congregation. If you have any questions about UN Sunday, the Envoy Program, or the UU-UNO in general, please contact Holly Sarkissian at envoycoordinator@uu-uno.org.
We invite you to submit the sermon or address from your UN Sunday service for the 2011 Dana Greeley Award. Consisting of a $1,000 honorarium and the opportunity to deliver the winning address at General Assembly 2011, the award honors the memory of the Rev. Dana McLean Greeley, first president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a strong supporter of the United Nations. Sermons highlighting the work of the United Nations and the UU-UNO will be given priority consideration for this award. Send submissions by February 1, 2011 to greeleysermon@uu-uno.org.
As president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA), I am constantly aware of the need for global witness in a world torn by strife, riddled by inequality and calling us to speak out for peace and social justice. To this end, all UUs can be justifiably proud of the growing stature and courageous voice of our United Nations Office (UNO) in New York.
Bruce Knotts, his board, staff, interns and volunteers have, in a remarkably short period of time, transformed our presence at the United Nations to one of activism, constructive participation and leadership on the world stage. Whether they are speaking out on human rights, demanding social justice, calling the world’s attention to climate change, advocating for women’s rights or actively seeking peaceful solutions to global problems, they are making our voices heard and speaking truth to power…always.
This critical component of our denomination needs your support. They have leveraged scarce resources and delivered results far beyond expectations. Simply put, they have earned our respect and we need them now more than ever.
Won’t you make a generous congregational commitment to the UNO? I promise you it will make a world of difference.
UPDATE: Marilyn has made it halfway around Mt. Blanc and sends her “greetings from the ancient Roman village of Aosta settled by the Praetorian guards of the Emperor Augustus!”
Dear Friends,
Our immediate past UU-UNO Board President, Marilyn Mehr, Ph.D. is celebrating her 72nd birthday by hiking Mont Blanc. She gives proof of the ageless energy she showed as our Board President for the past several years. Not satisfied with just hiking up Mont Blanc, our intrepid Marilyn is using this opportunity to raise much-needed funds for the vital work of the UU-UNO. Please read Marilyn’s letter below and encourage her mountain climbing at Mont Blanc by donating to the ascent the UU-UNO does every day at the United Nations to surmount barriers of bigotry and ignorance to ensure a better world for us all.
Sincerely,
Bruce Knotts, Executive Director
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Dear Friends,
As many of you know, I stepped down as President of the Board of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office (UU-UNO) last April. I am proud of the many accomplishments of our Board and Office over the last four years, and am eager to support our new President, Catherine Onyemelukwe.
I stepped down, but I didn’t run far. When our new President asked me to serve as Membership Committee Co-Chair and as the 50th Anniversary Co-Chair, I didn’t hesitate to accept. I accepted because I believe that the UU-UNO has a proud record of supporting human rights, the nurturing of the earth and the educating of the young.
Still, I wanted a new challenge, one that would combine my passion for the work we do at the UN with a yearning to try something entirely new. When I saw the ad in a Road Scholar newsletter, “Above and Beyond: Hiking Mt. Blanc,” I knew that I had to take this trip.Continue reading ‘Hiking Mt. Blanc at 70 for the UU-UNO’
DEAR ABBY: I recently had a child and would like to join a church for the community, moral messages and the music. I grew up going to one and got a lot out of it.
However, exploration throughout my 20s made me realize that I didn’t believe what was being taught. I tried hard to accept the doctrines, but truthfully, I doubt I ever will. Would it be dishonest to start attending again? — NEW MOM IN ARKANSAS
DEAR NEW MOM: Many people consider themselves to be more “spiritual” than “religious.” And I’m willing to bet that in many congregations there is a range in the intensity of belief among the attendees.
I encourage you to select a denomination with which you feel most comfortable. Some — like the Unitarian Universalist faith (www.uua.org) — have no dogma or creed and support their members in following their own spiritual paths.
All of us at the UU-UNO stand with our UUA President, Peter Morales, who was arrested yesterday along with many other Unitarian Universalists who stood on the side of love with the millions of undocumented immigrants in this country who face ever-increasing threats to their safety and families, especially due the clearly unconstitutional new anti-immigration law in Arizona. There are those who want to make the case that by the very virtue of being in the United States without proper documents, you are a criminal. Most of us here are. Most American families came to this country without documents and we set up residence on land that did not belong to us. Many of our ancestors were brought here by force, also without documents, to work on land that had been forcibly and illegally taken from the original owners. After a 200+ year history of our ancestors coming to this land without documents nor permission to take land that didn’t belong to them, we now want to stand on laws which we have made up to document our own presence on land that we took by force.
Today’s immigrants come to this land for the same as our ancestors did: to escape political, social and economic oppression. An area that the UU-UNO is looking at very closely involves the many immigrants who come to this country escaping homophobic oppression in other countries.
The immigrants who are here live here because we wanted them here. We hired them to do jobs nobody else wanted to do. We rent them apartments, sell them cars, educate them in our schools, welcome them in our churches and in a thousand ways, as a society, we welcome them in our country until that time comes when politicians turn our heads to make us pull back that welcome. If we never wanted undocumented immigrants in our country, they could have never existed here for so many years. They are here because we have wanted them here for so many reasons.
