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UNITARIAN FELLOWSHIP OF HOUSTON 1504 Wirt Road Houston, Texas 77055 • Telephone: 713.686.5876 • E-mail: ufhouston@comcast.net • Fax:713.686.7664 |
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 | Social Justice and Community Action: We are a justice-seeking people ..... We are a Welcoming Congregation! |
FELLOWSHIP COMMUNITY OUTREACH PROJECT
On April 13th, we took up a monetary collection for Turning Point Center, a group that provides services for elderly homeless persons. The collection will be dedicated to revitalizing our connection with a community service that has historical ties with our congregation. In the past, congregation members supported the Turning Point, which was then named the Rehab Mission. Your generosity on Sunday raised over $400, which provides vital seed money for our work with the Turning Point. The Unitarian Fellowship of Houston will be handling serving lunch on the third Saturday of each month. Your board has also committed "seed time" to the project. Each board member will provide hours in order to jump start our staffing on the project.
An outside project that we can commit to as a group is long overdue. This is a big commitment but it is one that can reap many rewards. We can have the opportunity to work together as members of a religious community, to present ourselves to the public as a religious community, and to challenge ourselves to be more than a group of people that get together on Sundays. I look forward to working with the Turning Point and to seeing you there as well.
Sarah Berel-Harrop, SJCO Chair
In the 1988, Isha Salas Desselle began a home for elderly homeless called The Rehab Mission here in the neighborhood. Spending all of her savings, she acquired a dilapidated, 34-unit apartment house and refurbished it as a haven for homeless elderly (50 or older). It is the only shelter that focuses on the elderly. In 1989, the Fellowship, with the leadership of George and Elish Ikeson, established a supportive relationship with the Rehab Missioin. With their passing, our ties waned, too. In 2003, the Mission was renamed Turning Point Center to more nearly reflect the goal of helping to turn lives around.
The Center provides an array of services from food, shelter, and clothing to medical, mental health, social services, and employment training. Additionally, all residents must do some kind of work at the Center, in the office or on the grounds, to contribute to its maintenance.
We took up our Christmas Eve collection for the benefit of Turning Point Center, and when we delivered the check to them they asked that we consider a greater connection – one that would involve personal participation as well as funds.
Recently the Fellowship board approved working with Turning Point Center as our Community Outreach Program. Once a month, on every third Saturday, we will provide the lunch service at the Center. We will purchase, prepare, and serve the food to approximately 100 of the residents, as well as clean up afterwards. Our offering once a month, on every second Sunday, will be used to sustain this project. We will begin serving this meal on Saturday, May 17th. The Sunday collection on each 2nd Sunday will be dedicated to supporting our Turning Point Center Outreach Program.
Turning Point Center is located at 1701 Jacquelyn, very near our building. More information on Turning Point Center can be found at: http://www.turningpointcenter.org/. We will need five persons every third Saturday to make this program successful. We hope that everyone will participate in this very special Community Outreach Project.
Dodie McKellar and Val Harrop
Action Alerts:
At the 2007 GA in Portland, OR, the delegates adopted a Statement of Social Conscience on Moral Values for a Pluralistic Society. Follow this link to read this Statement of Conscience and consider what steps we, individually and as a congregation, can take. We also will continue study on the Congregational Study/Action Issue (CSAI) Peacemaking through 2010. Follow this link to learn more about this CSAI.
At the 2008 GA in Ft. Lauderdale, the delagates voted on a CSAI about Ethical Eating to work on through 2012. Learn more about it here. Go here to learn more about the Study/Action Issue process.
Follow this link to the 2006 SOC on global warming. The Environmental Defense Action Fund has published 20 Simple Steps to Fight Global Warming. Here is a link to that document.
Work on he Congregational Study/Action Issue on Peacekeeping adopted in 2006 will continue through 2010. In accordance with the new process, for a draft UUA Statement of Conscience to be placed on the Final Agenda of the General Assembly, twenty-five percent (25%) of all certified congregations must participate in the ballot vote concerning such draft UUA Statement of Conscience. Please follow this link to the CSAI and consider how we may participate in this process fully.
UUA Washington Office for Advocacy has started preparing e-mail letters to Congressmen that you can click and send! Oppose Torture! Oppose Warrantless Wiretapping! Support Women and Youth in their Struggle with HIV/AIDS: the PATHWAY Act Support Comprehensive Sex Ed: the REAL Act Support DC Voting Rights! Citizens Tool Kit on Iraq Tools to support comprehensive sexuality education can be found here. |
Social Justice and Fellowshippers have a long history together.
Our UU members are active in many Houston civic and service organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the League of Women Voters, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Amnesty International, and P-FLAG as well as many other worthy organizations. We have fought for diversity and against racial, ethnic, gender, and religious prejudice. We have fought against spanking in our public schools. We have raised our voices to oppose the death penalty. We have supported elder care charities and our youth have made bags of necessities for the homeless.
This year, we are particularly focused on our Turning Point Outreach Program and seeking ways to participate in the UUA Social Witness activities. Sarah Berel-Harrop ( ufhsjca@comcast.net ) is our Social Justice and Community Outreach chair. Please contact her if you would like to become an active participant in social justice issues.
Project R.I.O.T. serves homeless youth in the Montrose area. The holidays are over, but it’s still cold outside! We continue to collect items such as gloves, socks, and toiletries in the R.I.O.T. box in the lobby. Also, RIOT serves meals on Thursday nights at Interfaith Ministries. Volunteers may also work directly with the youth or make sandwiches for others to serve.
Execution Vigils are held from 5:30 – 6:20 the night of each execution in Texas. The site for the vigil changes every two months. The vigils will be held from 5:30 until 6:20 at locations that rotate monthly. Follow this link to find the current information. Monthly Vigil - Mecom Fountain at 6:30 pm on the first Wednesday of the month. The Houston Chapter of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty meets on monthly on the 4th Tuesday at the Olive Branch Meeting Room, 2360 Rice Blvd.
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Clean Water Protection Act -
At last year's Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) GA in St. Louis, our congregation sponsored an Action of Immediate Witness to End Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. We sponsored this AIW as a follow-up to the Applachian Voices who visited our Fellowship in April. One of the simplest things we can do to implement the AIW to End Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining is to support passage of the Clean Water Protection Act, HR 2719, would simply change the definition of fill in the Clean Water Act to clarify that waste is not fill, and thus prohibit the dumping of waste products into waterways. Members of Appalachian Voices spoke to Fellowshippers last on April 25th about the devastation they are experiencing in their local communities due to the practice of Mountain Top Removal Coalmining. Waste from the mountain is dumped into nearby valleys and waterways in the process of MTR mining. They showed a DVD that provided a stark picture of what is happening to their towns (DVD is available from the fellowship library). They are asking that people write handwritten letters to their Senators and Representatives asking them to support HR 2719, making the following points:
- The Clean Water Act is meant to protect, not bury, our waterways
- More than 400,000 acres of Appalachia’s mountains have been leveled and more than 1,000 miles of streams have been buried by mountaintop removal mining
- Please cosponsor and support the Clean Water Protection Act to help protect our nation’s waterways and to end the destruction practice of MTR mining.
| We Are Gay and Straight Together....... |  |
Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays ( PFLAG ) meets the first Sunday of each month at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 5501 S. Main at Binz, 2 – 4:30 PM.
PFLAG is not just for parents! Straight allies and GLBT persons are most welcome. Hope to see you there!
Help Restore Critical Information About Substance Abuse on Health and Human Services Website! The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has removed critical GLBT-related health information from its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) website at the demand of the antigay Family Research Council. More information on what happened at PFLAG’s press release here: http://www.pflag.org/index.php?id=694. Please take action. Go to the following URL for suggestions on what to say when you write or call your congressperson about this issue: http://www.pflag.org/index.php?id=697.
Demonstration in Support of Marriage Rights for All - March 2006
QPR Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention Training
The QPR suicide prevention model is similar to CPR in the sense that citizen gatekeepers are frequently in a better position to see the signs of a suicidal crisis than health professionals because of their proximity to the person who is in crisis, and provides early intervention and a bridge to health professionals. Just like CPR, anyone – teachers, parents, neighbors, ministers, YOU - are in a gatekeeper position to others. The ideal, per the QPR website, is to have at least one person per family unit trained in QPR, and this community based model would raise awareness of suicide and underlying mental health issues and result in saved lives. Contact Sarah at ufhsjca@comcast.net for information about arranging a QPR training for your group. Please visit the QPR institute website at http://qprinstitute.com if you would like more information.
Click this link for the complete text of Paul Rickter’s (Secretary of the UUA) letter to the congregations.