Outreach: Community and Beyond
The following groups are members of the Outreach & Social Justice Council.
Children's Religious Education Social Action Sundays
Contact: Michelle Conklin, Religious Education Director (425) 747-3780
We provide children with a clear connection between their Unitarian Universalist faith and helping others. We help children discover their ability to make the good choices that will build a better world. Children and youth engage in activities including knitting and sewing hats and scarves for homeless children, creating supplies for the humane society, and feeding the hungry.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Volunteer as a Religious Education Teacher
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Bring a social action idea to Michelle Conklin, the Religious Education Director
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Help lead a special project on one or two Sunday mornings
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Provide a connection between your church and your social service agency
Congregations for the Homeless
Contact: Laurie Wick
East Shore hosts up to 30 homeless men overnight during the month of October. We provide dinner, breakfast, and sack lunches; as well as showers, toiletries, and clean towels.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Cook meals
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Shop for groceries
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Wash a load of towels
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Unload the van on October 1st
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Pack up the van on November 1st
Contact: Andy Iwano and Pam Monger
We get together and cook meals in the East Shore Unitarian Church kitchen on the first Monday of every month. Then we deliver and serve the food to the needy at Crossroads Community Center.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Cook with a group of enthusiastic Unitarian Universalists
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Deliver food
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Serve food to the hungry
Eastside Domestic Violence Program (EDVP)
Contact: JoAnne Way
East Shore’s Women's Perspective supports EDVP with two projects each year. We have collected pajamas, entertainment items (from basketballs to CDs) lingerie, and books. This fall we concentrated on supplies for the apartments that shelter women and their children. In the spring, we will donate kids' items. You do not have to be a member of the Women's Perspective to donate; anyone is welcome to help!
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Donate requested goods for survivors of domestic violence
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Help solicit, organize, and deliver donations
Eastside Interfaith Social Concerns Council
Contact: JoAnne Way
This interfaith council is composed of representatives of many congregations and social service agencies that are concerned for the well being of the people of the Eastside. The EISCC provides a forum to educate, advocate, initiate, coordinate, support, and through task forces and other means, work for the common good of the Eastside community to address human needs and improve the quality of life. This council organizes many local efforts such as Congregations for the Homeless (see in this pamphlet).
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Attend a meeting to discover how your talents and energy can make a difference
East Side Women’s Shelter Ministry Team
Contact: JoAnne Way
One day every month we bring a warm, nutritious, noon-time meal to the women who seek shelter and community at the only East Side Women's Shelter.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Deliver a meal
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Join us in cooking a meal
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Spend time with women at the shelter
Contact: Dave Baumgart
We facilitate housing on the Eastside for people with severe and persistent mental illness. We have two objectives:1) Community Development - working with other congregations and organizations, to facilitate housing on the Eastside for the mentally ill. 2) Maintain the Holly House, our house on the church campus, in good physical and financial shape to serve our client family.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Join our committee and help with brainstorming
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Help recruit other churches or organizations to create housing for the mentally ill
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Attend meetings as an advocate for the mentally ill
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Become a Holly House volunteer
Contact: Joan Montagnes
We coordinate the two East Shore Peace Ministry Teams: End the Iraq Occupation and Global Peace. These sub-Ministry Teams are active in ending current and future armed conflicts, striving to understand the meaning of peace in daily life, and discovering what it means to make East Shore a “Peace Church.”
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Attend a vigil, march, or educational presentation
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Learn about legislative advocacy
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Participate in peace-oriented adult faith development classes
Contact: Jeanne Lamont
Food collected in the shopping cart outside the sanctuary on Sunday mornings is given to local food banks.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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When you go grocery shopping, buy some extra non-perishable food items and place them in the cart next time you’re at church
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Volunteer to deliver the collected food to the food bank of your choice
Forums and Other Adult Programs
Contact: Dick Jacke
We aim to link our Unitarian Universalist faith to a teaching ministry for justice. Almost every Sunday morning at 9:30 we hold an educational forum on an aspect of social justice. Topics range from local environmental issues to international trade concerns, from reproductive rights to how to become an effective social justice advocate. We often show videos, hold discussions, and invite local experts to speak.
During other times in the week we often offer adult programming that grabs the intersection between faith and justice. Classes may include “Peace and Spirituality,” “Creation Stories and Environmental Sustainability,” or “Classism, Racism, and Democracy.”
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Attend one of the many social justice educational opportunities
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Suggest an idea for an adult program or forum to Rev. Joan Montagnes
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Offer to lead an adult program or forum
Contact: JoAnne Way
Congregations for Kids is a group of congregations, service organizations, and businesses that work with the Bellevue School District to help students whose families cannot afford needed supplies. In July, we collect backpacks and school supplies from church members.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Donate supplies in July
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Help sort supplies and pack backpacks
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Help with publicity for this project
Contact: Alan Carter
The Green Team is East Shore's environmental justice ministry. We consider the church facility and engage the congregational members, children, and wider community in the practice of clean green living. We will employ some or all of the elements of the Unitarian Universalist Earth Ministry's Green Sanctuary Program. We are improving East Shore's energy and water usage. We have supplied worm bins for kitchen waste. We submit articles on environmental topics to The East Shore Beacon, collaborate with the Grounds Committee, and make input for the Forum and the other religious education programs. In the words of Albert Einstein "We cannot solve our problems with the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." To apply the Unitarian Universalist Association's 7th Principle, "respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part," and to put your faith into action:
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Join the Social Justice Ministry's Green Team
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Bring your clean green living ideas to the Team
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Help the Team put your ideas into effective congregational practice
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Fill out the Green Team Survey!
Contact: Eric Schneider
Our Ministry Team promotes the work of Heifer International. By working with Heifer, we will help bring peace and justice to the world’s citizens who do not have the resource to take care of themselves. Heifer does not offer a “hand out,” they offer “a hand up.” In other words, instead of creating unjust dependencies of poor people relying on hand outs from the rich, Heifer provides means and training for people to care for themselves.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Help out with an alternative gift fair
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Bring Heifer activities into children and youth ministry programs
Contact: Julie Missal
Every year we choose several social service agencies to be recipients of gifts from our Holiday Giving Tree. The agencies supply us with requests for household goods, clothes, and toys for needy families. Each request hangs as a tag on the Giving Tree. Congregational members choose tags, purchase gifts, and place them unwrapped under the tree.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Next holiday season take one or several tags from the Giving Tree
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Be an “elf” and transport gifts from the Tree to the agencies
Contact: Cathy Perry
Unitarianism began in the 16th century in Transylvania, Romania. These congregations underwent severe discrimination for four centuries, and only recently became free churches within the past few decades. East Shore shares a vital connection with a 200-year-old Transylvanian Unitarian congregation. Ongoing communication, biannual visits, special projects, pen pals, and fundraising bring us together. We are now exploring the idea of beginning a partner church relationship with a congregation from the Khasi Hills in India.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Come to our monthly meetings
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Reach out to another culture, experience a different perspective
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Be enriched by your religious roots and heartfelt friendships
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Make the world a smaller place
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Close the gap between “haves” and “have-nots” in a culturally sensitive manner
Partner Church Gala, March 29, 2008 - MORE!
People in Community Service Initiative Fund
Contact: Chris Butler
This fund strives to support the inherent worth and dignity of individuals and strengthen the communities in which they live. The fund exists to serve people and their communities by enabling access to safe and affordable housing; protection from violence and abuse; access to subsistence food; education and employment preparation, health and wellness information and services; healthy communities supported by clean air, clean water, and sustainable ecosystems.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Donate to the fund!
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Discover if your employer will match your donation
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Apply for PICSI funds for a wonderful world-improving project
Contact: Leif Johnson
Join us in redeveloping our retired farm parcel next to Holly House, in support of the earth and our community. A weedy tangle of vines is giving way to delightfully productive garden space through our efforts. Our gardening methods are naturally sustainable; conserving water, soil and wildlife resources. Half of our produce is donated to social justice causes of the gardeners’ choice. Check out the Pea Patch; interact and join if you like.
Contact: Tom Castor
Every second Sunday of the month East Shore takes the entire morning offering and gives it away to a social justice cause outside our church walls. We select the monthly recipient agency and educate the congregation about the agency’s work through Sunday morning Forums. We try to match the offering with the theme of the service. The average Sunday morning collection is about $450, but on the second Sunday of the month the collection routinely jumps to $1,500—$2,000.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Join the Team in selecting agencies; send a suggestion to the chair
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Give generously every second Sunday
Contact: Bob Lewis
Tent City IV is a self-governing community of homeless people who live in an encampment on the East Side. Every three months they must move to a new location. The encampment is almost always on the property of a congregation. East Shore is unable to host Tent City IV because our grounds aren’t appropriate for their needs. We can, however, help the encampment in many other ways.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Help cook and serve hot meals
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Offer to make sack lunches
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Get to know a person without a home; have them tell you about how to run a peaceful self-governing community.
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
Contact: Lynn Roesch
The UUSC promotes and protects human rights in the United States and internationally. East Shore has an active group that supports UUSC activity in our church. They hold educational workshops and find speakers for Sunday services. In the autumn the UUSC distributes “Guest at Your Table” boxes – small cardboard boxes for mealtime donations of money – reminders that due to poverty, others may not be able to eat. The boxes are collected after Thanksgiving.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Attend our committee meetings
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Come up with wonderful ways to educate the people of our congregation and the public on issues of human rights
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Attend our UUSC sponsored events
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Fill up a “Guest at Your Table” box every fall
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Join the national UUSC
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Read the UUSC newsletter
Contact: Tony Peden
East Shore is very proud to be an official Welcoming Congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We work to make our congregation more welcoming to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning communities. We also work for greater justice for people of all sexual orientations in the larger community. We welcome participants from the LGBTQ communities and their straight allies in making the world more just for all.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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March with us in the annual Pride Parade
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Attend one of our social events
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Participate in one of our social justice events
Contact: Ann Reynolds
Our congregation takes care of one apartment in the YWCA Family Village for transitional housing. Any family leaving the apartment is welcome to whatever food or furnishings are in the apartment at the time of their departure. We clean, paint, and restock the apartment whenever a family leaves.
How you can transform your faith into justice:
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Be ready to jump at the chance to paint, clean, shop, and make an apartment into a home for a family in transition