Resources for Widening Our Circle
Each month the Widening the Circle team plans to offer the congregation a resource to help further USG on its journey to Widen Our Circle.

May: We ask that all leaders who are writing Annual Reports include an update on the status of your widening the circle goals. Linked HERE is the list of Widening the Circle recommendations. For those with action items, feel free to modify the wording of action items/recommendations consistent with your current priorities and other work planned within your group or at USG. If you have questions about navigating the document, or finding recommendations for your group/committee, let us know contact us via our group email: wideningthecircle@usguu.org

April: We were meeting our ministerial candidate.

March: Susan Rizack of the Welcome Team led a workshop entitled Universal Mindset –
Welcoming Persons with Disabilities Seen & Unseen on March 17.

February:   In a follow-up to the Transition conversation about bias vs preference on January 28, we encourage reading (or re-reading) the avatars’ stories from the Widening the Circle report. These are composite accounts of experiences which people with identities not well-represented in UU congregations have had. 

January: Please do the Microsoft Diversity, Equity and Inclusion session on Bias. And then join Shobhi Kanal of the Transitions Team for a conversation which builds off the Breaking Barriers, Building Beliefs workshop and will address bias, preferences, first impressions, and labeling in the Edna Jones Assembly Room, January 28, 12-1:30pm. This will help prepare us to welcome our next minister. 

December: Please do the first in a series of free resources from Microsoft to promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), about Allyship. The modules are self paced with good examples, clear explanations, are well researched, professionally produced, and only 15 minutes long.

November: read or listen to this sermon, Welcoming as a Spiritual Practice, by Alex Kapitan, who was a facilitator of the TransInclusion workshop USG offered last year. And if you haven’t yet, please also watch the October 22 Sunday service with Rev. Kev’s sermon about his family’s journey supporting his trans daughter Eliza (if you don’t want to watch the whole service, watch from 15:15 to 27:30.) And if you didn’t hear one or both of CB Beal’s two sermons, email WideningTheCircle@usguu.org for links. 

Widening the Circle at USG

At USG, the Widening the Circle (WtC) work began in February 2020 with a group of USG members and staff, some but not all, in leadership positions who considered each of the report’s recommendations, and compiled a list of GOALS AND ACTIONS FOR USG. The objective is to be a truly open and inclusive community, in which members of all racial, ethnic, LGBTQIA, economic, ability and other identities are actively recruited, welcomed and connected.

The Widening the Circle Report was created by a Commission on Institutional Change that the UUA Board charged in 2017 with supporting long-term cultural and institutional change that redeems the anti-oppressive and multi-cultural promise and ideals of Unitarian Universalism and is accountable to the richness of our diverse heritage. The report was presented at GA in 2019.

At USG, our work was also rooted in the proposed 8^th Principle, adopted by USG in May 2019: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse, multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.“

As we moved to the implementation phase in the fall of 2022, we began meeting with USG groups as well as holding Q&A sessions with the congregation as a whole.

Additional information is included in Widening the Circle’s 2023 Annual Report and on the WtC Process page. To learn more or get involved, please contact us at  WideningtheCircle@usguu.org