Update from the Children Youth and Family Advisory Committee

by Sara Olson

As you may be aware, a group of volunteers serves on a Children Youth and Families Advisory Committee to support and help guide the work of our religious ed programming. Allison and the members of this group welcome your questions and input as we work to strengthen and grow the important programming offered to our young people and families. Here’s a brief recap of our work this month.

We celebrate the work already in progress! The pancake breakfast for trans families and individuals was well-attended, joyful, and needed! The UUA General Assembly is coming up, and Allison will be inviting youth to participate as they have in the past. Curriculum review and revision continues for the 7-12th graders. 

We engaged in conversation with Reverend Ashley regarding stewardship and RE programming. First U has the highest RE enrollment of any UU church in the country! As a group, we discussed ways to engage the many families in our congregation in pledging to support our large and important program. You’re likely to hear from us in the months ahead, and we invite anyone enthusiastic about sharing the impact RE has for you and your family to join us in spreading the word about the importance of keeping it funded!

The bulk of our time together was spent discussing how to further deepen and grow community at church. We feel driven to continue to build real and rich community here. As always, we generated plenty of creative ideas from park meet ups and family circle brunches to directories and RE class gatherings and even a very exciting intergenerational anthropology project! Now we’ll work to put ideas into action—and we’d welcome your energy and involvement! 

Feel free to reach out to any CYF Advisory member with your ideas or interest in engaging with us! Current committee members include Sara Olson, Sarah Heuser, Samantha White, Dylan Flunker, Troi Ferguson, Kirk Cozine, Annie Holtzclaw, and Johannah Scheurer. (First U Members can use the Breeze directory to find contact info. Staff contact: Allison Connelly-Vetter, allison [at] firstuniv.org.)