William Schulz: The UUSC stands with those in need

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is marking 75 years of helping people worldwide.

|
Courtesy of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
William Schulz (wearing blue shirt), president and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, helps out at a UUSC-sponsored eco-village in Haiti.

In 1939 Frederick May Eliot, president of the American Unitarian Association, was looking for a volunteer willing to go to Europe to help refugees escape Nazi persecution. He contacted 16 ministers, who all turned him down.

But the 17th, the Rev. Waitstill Sharp, said yes. Together with his wife, Martha, he helped refugees make a dangerous journey across the Pyrenees to Lisbon, where they were able to board boats to freedom. The couple returned again in 1940, this time under the auspices of the newly formed Unitarian Service Committee.

Today the Sharps are celebrated as pioneer human rights workers. In 2006, they were named Righteous Among the Nations, an honor bestowed by the state of Israel on non-Jews who have performed heroic acts on behalf of Jews.

This year the efforts of the Sharps and others are being recalled by what is now known as the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee as it commemorates its 75th anniversary. Over the subsequent decades the UUSC has helped people in need around the world, from Japanese-Americans displaced by the US government during World War II to Nigerians as their country moved toward independence from Britain in the 1950s.

The 75th anniversary was also marked by an exhibition at the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., the city that also is home to the UUSC.

“We see the past as an inspiration for us to actually move into the future, following the kind of principles that the Sharps and other founders established for us,” says the Rev. Dr. William Schulz, president and chief executive officer of the UUSC. “It’s a bedrock principle of Unitarian Universalists that all human beings have inherent worth and dignity,” he notes, calling it “our obligation when that worth and dignity are under threat to stand in solidarity with those people.”

Today the UUSC works in three areas: environmental justice, with an emphasis on climate change and the right to clean water; economic justice, focusing on fair working conditions; and “rights at risk,” which includes those in need either because of natural disasters or corporate or government actions.

The UUSC calls on volunteers and partners with local groups who have innovative ideas for solutions.

“It’s very important that we don’t impose our own one-size-fits-all template on everybody,” Mr. Schulz says.

Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for example, most foreign aid was going into the capital, Port-au-Prince, with very little reaching the more remote central plateau. UUSC worked with a local agronomist, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, who runs The Papaye Peasant Movement, to create a series of six self-sustaining rural eco-villages that today house close to a thousand people, Schulz says.

While the UUSC may not rank among the largest human rights groups, it has remained steadfast in its purpose over three-quarters of a century.

“We’re casting our small mites of power on the side of those who are at risk and under oppressive economic and political structures,” Schulz says. “That’s why we do the work.”

• To learn more visit the UUSC website at www.uusc.org.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to William Schulz: The UUSC stands with those in need
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2015/0807/William-Schulz-The-UUSC-stands-with-those-in-need
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe