Promoting economic justice through partnership,
advocacy, and experiential learning

Human and economic rights are advanced through mutual struggle -- people working in collaboration with others. To build these connections, UUSC’s economic justice program links our more than 47,000 members with our program partners in order to improve the lives of the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable workers.

We do this by developing strategic partnerships and networks, building movements, and influencing local, statewide and national policy on workers’ rights and living wages. To this effort UUSC brings staff advocacy, a faith-based activist constituency, educational tools, and a focus on organizing, educating and mobilizing youth.

Program Partnerships

UUSC develops partnerships with organized, transparent, and democratic civil society actors who courageously confront and challenge oppression and inequality.

We help our grassroots partners grow by providing small grants and technical support. Through ongoing dialogue and field visits, UUSC fosters an exchange of information among partner organizations that are working on similar issues. We help workers’ rights activists share networking opportunities that can have a transformative effect in building movements and campaigns from what might have been isolated efforts.

UUSC is dedicated to forging strategic alliances with and among our partners, and to sharing the learning that is generated by alliances working for social change.

Advocacy and Policy

UUSC supplements our partner work by developing advocacy that builds on the education and organizing efforts of grassroots actors. Our economic justice program is designed to influence public and private institutional policies and practices.

Partnerships provide evidence and a foundation for advocacy activities and experiential learning opportunities.

Education and Experiential Learning

UUSC’s JustWorks experiential learning camps provide important opportunities to promote awareness and skills among participants. JustWorks camps provide a foundation of "field-learning" for honing critical thinking, decision-making, activism, and policy making skills.

Read about "Choose Justice!" a Justworks delegation to Guatemala co-hosted in January 2006 by UUSC and Equal Exchange, the fair trade coffee company. This trip provided participants with a deeper understanding of the lives of indigenous Mayan coffee farmers, and the complexities of international trade, human rights, and consumer choices. The camp also offered lessons on ways to advocate for fair trade and economic justice back in their hometowns.