On the Ground at General Assembly: Appreciating UUSC Volunteers

Thursday morning, we had two dozen participants attend our volunteer appreciation breakfast. It was great to see our volunteers from around the country, and we were excited to host the first-ever public viewing of our newest UUSC video (you'll see it soon)! This breakfast is a special way for us to acknowledge the invaluable support and efforts of our network of volunteers.

UUSC President and CEO Bill Schulz greeted everyone and gave an overview of the plans ahead for 2011–2012. And then we had greetings from National Cochairs Gay Ann Gustafson (western territory) and Bob and Irene Keim (central territory).

Kara Smith, UUSC's associate for grassroots mobilization, updated everyone on four ongoing advocacy campaigns, which we will be conducting during General Assembly to help raise awareness in the denomination about these issues. We're encouraging people to take action on several specific issues, including ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, implementing important human-right-to-water legislation, passing a bill that will increase minimum wage for tipped workers, and calling for a Commission of Inquiry on U.S.-sponsored torture. This is Torture Awareness Week, so the latter is a particularly timely campaign.

Following the advocacy presentation, we broke out into small groups to look at our advocacy kits — a UUSC apron and materials to help volunteers be visible in the crowd and interact with people effectively. Check out our photos on Facebook!

Following our orientation on "roaming advocacy," we had thank-you comments from Maxine Neil, who noted that volunteers, through their efforts with UUSC, generate about 13 percent of our annual budget. We could not do the essential work of advancing human rights without the support of our dedicated volunteers!