Social Action Circle Update, Jerry Buchanan

Be sure to be here at church on February 12. We'll be having the Second Annual UUCVH SAC Race! Last year, over $400 was raised for three lucky winners' favorite charities. Join in the fun by participating and possibly winning for your favorite cause. It's easy.

For $10, you will be given a sack with a playing card in it. (You can buy several sacks at $10 each if you wish to improve your chance of winning.) On a given signal, we will pass these sacks around a circle. When we stop, whoever ends up with the cards that were previously selected for prizes will have either 60% of the total winnings (for first place) donated in their name to their favorite charity; 30% (for second place; or 10% for third place. All money received will be paid out in winnings.

To participate, look for the sign-up sheet in the Fellowship Hall. This event will take place in the Fellowship Hall after the February 12 church service and will take only ten minutes so as not to conflict with other events. If you cannot be at the service that week, you may designate a proxy to act on your behalf--or one will be assigned for you.

With a recent turnover of funds for Kiva by making four more $25 loans to enrepreneurs around the world, we have impacted the lives of 42 families. Go to http://www.kiva.org/ to see how this worthy cause affects the lives of thousands around the world. You can join in for only $25. The payback rate for all loans made through Kiva is over 97%, meaning that fewer than 3% of the loans are defaulted on. All the loans that have been made by our money has been paid back, enabling us to loan that money out to someone else.

Look for news coming soon of another night of poker to benefit one of the families from Ascencia, the Glendale homeless shelter that we help support in many ways.

Jerry Buchanan, Chair of the Social Action Circle

Social Action Circle update

As we look back on the year just passed, we recognize how meaningful this church is to the community. We have given so much to various organizations that improves the lives of some whose lives need enriching. So, let's not stop now!

The Social Action Circle is already making plans for 2012's actions. At our recent meeting, we voted to repeat the successful experiment from last year: the SAC race! Briefly, those who wish to participate will donate increments of $10 and designate their favorite charity. They will sit around a table and pass paper sacks, each containing a playing card. When the passing is done, three cards will be chosen from another deck to determine first-, second-, and third-place winners. First place will have the honor of having 60% of the total donations going to their charity. Second place will get 30% and third place, 10%.

Last year, $465 was donated, and everyone who joined in enjoyed the game. (I wonder where the odd $5 came from?) The Southern Poverty Law Center, Postconsumers.com, and the UU Legislative Ministry California all were beneficiaries of the event. This year, your favorite charity can be the winner.

Look for the sign-up sheet and chase down one of the SAC members to pay your entry fee. Remember, you can buy more than one chance. (One member bought 10 chances for $100 last year and was one of the winners.) A check made out to the church can be used to enter, for tax purposes. When you sign up, be sure to designate the charity you wish your winnings to go to. We will be holding the contest on February 12. Come join the fun!

Thank you to all who gave Christmas presents for the children. I hope you got a chance to see the array of presents that went to the kids. Again, the social workers were oohing and aahing over the wonderful gifts "their" kids were getting.

Look for another poker night coming up soon.

Jerry Buchanan, Chair, Social Action Circle

Social Action Circle Update, Jerry Buchanan

We're right in the middle of the holiday season. I know you were all wondering what season we're in the middle of, so now you know. Actually as members of UUCVH, you are aware of this season long before most everyone else. Our annual gifts to the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) put us in the mood very early.

By the time you read this, the gifts will have been taken to the social workers that we have worked with for years. I somehow think I'm cheating. I get to see the joy and hear the oohs and aahs from the social workers. Of course, they realize all the gifts come from you and others, but all the praise and thanks go to me.

With the help of you and the others, 49 children will be getting a little Christmas this year. I seldom find out anything about the kids, but I got some insight into the lives of a few of them, this year. There were two sisters, aged nine and eleven, just added to the caseworker's load in mid-November. They live in squalor behind a mechanic's garage in Pasadena. The social worker said she was aghast at the living conditions, and she has seen a lot. The mother wasn't home when the worker went to check on the apartment. The younger girl pleaded, "Please make Mommy take parenting classes!"

Another woman, aged 20, was just added. This is much older than the average person on their rolls, but she is pregnant. She got an extra-special something from one of our Santas.

One fun fact this year is the names of three brothers in their mid-teens on the list. Their names are Mykyll, Zyryll, and Czydryk. That's pronounced Michael, Zirell, and Cedric.

You might wonder how we got 49 gifts out of our small congregation. A few of us took one request to heart and solicited help from the workplace, other organizations, and friends. Almost half of the gifts came from this source. Thank you for spreading the word!

Some information that bears repeating is how the "Circle" works. Any member or friend of the church is welcome to join the Social Action Circle. We need the input and ideas from all of you. We meet on the third Sunday after church whenever there is something to discuss. We are sometimes in the middle of a project that doesn't need any follow-up, or we're between projects. We try to keep from overwhelming our members with requests to support charitable causes, so we take a time-out a few times a year.

But when we need ideas and input, everyone's suggestions are needed. That's where you come in. And we hope that you will come in.

One final thank-you goes out to two of our most recent friends, Jean and Ralph Morrison. They were gracious enough to join us at Ascencia to serve dinner for the homeless on November 31. One discouraging thing about the experience was that, since it was Halloween, the shelter, which is usually bustling with the sounds of children and everyone else, was eery in its silence. We hope all the food we prepared didn't go to waste. Remind me in five or six years when we next serve on Halloween night.

Social Action Circle Update, Jerry Buchanan

The Christmas gift celebration is well underway. I hope you have received your email from the office and have gone to your friends, co-workers, and associates in other organizations to expand our ability to honor more kids with gifts this year.

You will be receiving information on the child(ren) to buy for very soon. Please bring the gifts, in a gift bag, to church on or before November 27. That's the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so if you're planning on being away that weekend, be sure to deliver the gifts on November 20.

I will need help in transporting the gifts this year. My new car doesn't have as much cargo space as my older one. The gifts will be delivered on November 29 or 30 in the early afternoon. If you have some spare time and a car and are willing to help, see Jerry.

Two or three years ago, we had a service on the genocide and recovery in Rwanda. Much of the recovery was facilitated by the making and selling "Friendship baskets." We recently found out about a particular school in Rwanda whose students are in dire need of uniforms. Without uniforms, Rwanda's street children can easily be perceived as troublemakers or criminals and be taken to jail while walking to school or searching for food at lunch time. A uniform is literally a safety net for these vulnerable children.

Of course, these children usually can't afford the $12 to buy their own uniforms. Rwanda Partners (at http://rwandapartners.org/uniforms_transform.html) has organized an effort to receive donations for these uniforms. At our last meeting, the members of the Social Action Circle agreed to donate $120 for ten uniforms for this cause. Check out the website and see if you can help more.

As you read this, another fifth Monday has passed. Several of us celebrated the fifth Monday (and Halloween) by preparing and serving a meal at Ascencia, formerly PATH Achieve Glendale. If past results are any indicator, it was a great success and greatly appreciated by those it was prepared for.

Gratitude is what this season is all about. When we have the opportunity to show our gratitude by helping others, that gratitude is magnified. I know I'm grateful for my church and the many wonderful things that happen here.

Jerry Buchanan, Chair, Social Action Circle

Social Action Update

The Texas Hold ’em poker night of August 27 was a great success! Eight people participated in a night of refreshments and laughs and . . . oh yeah . . . we played some poker. To go along with the move-in baskets we are supplying to families moving from the shelter to transitional housing, we now can give a $50 grocery gift card to better help some get started. We raised $55 for the evening, allowing us to rollover $5 for the next card we buy. We will be holding these fund-raisers periodically to get more gift cards. We hope you will join us the next time. Watch for the date.

The big winner for the night was Tom Stapleford. He received the Poker Champ badge and you’ll see from the attached photo that he wore it proudly. (The big loser was Jerry Buchanan; he did not win one single hand due to his conservative playing. You won’t see his name with the word “conservative” close by very many times.) SAC member Jeanne Akerley created the badge and has a few more for future winners.

The local shelter mentioned above has gone through some restructuring, but fortunately, their operations remain the same—offering much needed services to the local homeless community. They are no longer part of the PATH network; they are an independent entity. At a recent fund-raising dinner, a total of $350,000 was raised! Actual expenses haven’t been totaled yet, but you can be sure that a wonderful percentage of that money will go directly to help the homeless. At that same dinner, it was announced that the shelter’s name has now been changed to Ascencia. So, what we have been calling PATH Achieve Glendale for years is now Ascencia.

The family who received the gift card mentioned (along with a move-in basket) has been homeless for almost two years. There are four children with their mother, who once all lived in their car. They finally were able to live in a couple of shelters before getting their apartment through Ascencia where they can now feel comfortable, keep their own hours, and finally eat Mom’s home-cooking that the kids have missed for so long. Thank you, poker players, for making this possible.

Jerry Buchanan, SAC Chair

Social Action Circle Update

In late August, two very important events occurred. I can't tell you how successful both events were because this is being written before they occurred to meet the deadline for submission. Both of these events benefitted PATH Achieve Glendale. First a few words about PATH:

PATH is an acronym for People Assisting the Homeless. They have several shelters around the county. The one in Glendale is one of the smallest. Here they have room for forty residents. All the residents sleep in one large room. (Of course, there is attentive security to make sure nothing improper happens, and there is zero tolerance for any such behavior.) PATH offers drug and alcohol couseling, parenting classes, psychological therapy, and has access to any other programs that are needed by the residents.

Some residents may qualify for transitional housing when they leave PATH. For up to two years, qualified folks can live in an apartment that has been leased by the shelter by paying a reduced rate of rent. This allows them to save some money and become self-sufficient and move out on their own.

The two events that UUCVH had at the end of August were to support the move into transitional housing and to feed the ones still in residence there.

As you know, we have been supplying move-in baskets of kitchen and bathroom items to those moving into transitional housing for quite a few years. The Social Action Circle (SAC) is now adding to those baskets a $50 grocery gift card to further help them in getting started. To fund those gift cards, SAC will periodically host a Texas Hold 'em night at the church. This began on August 27. We hope to have this as a regular event to help the ones in need.

The second event is our participation in what PATH refers to as the Guest Chef Program. Churches and other organizations in the area are responsible for one night a month in providing the evening meal. Since our funds are small, we serve only when there are five Mondays in a month. We buy the food and other supplies for the meal, prepare the meal at the church, and take it to the shelter. We serve the residents and sit down and enjoy the meal with them. You've never seen a more appreciative group of folks.

There is also a current drive to acquire donations of furniture for those going into transitional housing. If you have any gently used furniture you can donate, see Jerry Buchanan.

For more information on how you can help PATH Achieve Glendale as an individual, go to www.achieveglendale.org or, again, see Jerry.

Jerry Buchanan, Chair of Social Action Circle