April Meeting Minutes

Equality UUCA

Minutes

April 5, 2011

At the regular monthly meeting of Equality UUCA on Tuesday, April 5, 2011,

Kathy Smith, Rhonda Buckner, Elizabeth Fogarty, Rev. Carlton Smith, Gerda Keisweitter, Juliet Purll, Raymond Sidney-Smith, Susan Craig, Marc DeFrancis were in attendance. The meeting began at 7:30 in UUCA rm 13-15.

DADT Funeral Celebration:  Review of Sunday’s DADT repeal celebration. Majority of the comments were positive, including help, food, attendance, speakers, and program.

Specific lessons learned were the following:

• Addition into the program at the last minute created confusion;
• Important to remember to light the chalice;
• We need to broaden publicity, e.g., providing timing of events for media;
• It is a big problem not being able to have the event on UUCAva.org website;
• Congressional invites should be given an extra week for the irradiation delay; and
• Increased numbers are needed for clean up help.

Party follow-up. Congressional oversized thank you cards will be delivered by hand to the Hill offices. Elizabeth will send out a doodle survey to get everyone’s availability for those who want to join. Anyone who needs to be reimbursed for party expenditures needs to complete a pink UUCA form and put the form in Elizabeth Fogarty’s folder, located in the room across from the big copier room upstairs near the administrative offices. All are encouraged to do so because we probably didn’t exceed the allocated amount.

PFLAG Support groups are sponsored by Equality UUCA. The first monthly meeting will be the adult group beginning this Sunday 4/10 from 3-4:30pm. Once facilitators for the youth group are in place, the youth support group will begin. The monthly meetings of both groups will be the second Sunday of each month. One or two Equality UUCA volunteers will be needed to serve as greeters outside the meeting rooms whwen youth are present during the length of the meetings. Their role will be to monitor the building to aid in creating a safe space. This Sunday Elizabeth will serve as the volunteer on the ground. In the future, publicity will be needed for the support groups.

Arlington County Fair: Equality UUCA will consider how to be represented at the Arlington Fair in August.

Pride in June will be attended with other metro UU congregations. UUCA has offered to collect the joint contributions. So far 11 congregations have agreed to join. We will secure a parade spot and request that our location be before or after PFLAG. We will use the banner from last year. We may add the UUA.org website name to the banner. There will be a conference call to organize the participating congregations. Raymond can attend those conference calls, the first one is tentatively scheduled for 4/12. We need to find co-chairs for our Pride representation. We will have two tables at the festival that will include all 11 congregations. We will consider items to have at table, including volunteers, minister coverage, signature list, brochures, and tchochkes.

Initiating Gay Welcome Wagon. Susan is interested in creating a GLBT social program to aid new or not yet connected  GLBT people to feel comfortable in the church. She has already met with Sarah Masters who is very interested. She has also spoken with a member of the Fairfax UU church who is interested in joint events. Susan’s goal is to have a kickoff event on the 1^st Sunday in September. Send ideas to Susan Craig. Some ideas discussed were: to include welcoming stickers on UUCA greeter badges, setting up a table, setting up standard lunches or other social meetings. Equality UUCA will connect to this GLBT social activity similar to our PFLAG support group, maintaining our Equality UUCA work as straight/GLBTQ advocacy.

Equality UUCA fellowship table. We have a table reserved this Sunday and the Sunday after. We will need to have volunteers staff the table after each service. This Sunday each Equality UUCA member will join at the table after one or both services and write 5 thank you cards. Elizabeth or Rhonda will craft the model thank you language by Sunday. Raymond will work with Susan to create material such as a brochure that can serve as Equality UUCA marketing. We will be looking to staff the table at least once per month to maintain visibility within the congregation.

The meeting ended by 9:15pm.

Meetings are the 1^st Tuesday of every month at 7:30 - Next meeting Tuesday, May 3