Green Sanctuary!

More on the environmental activist side of things. The social action committee and ourselves are tackling the mission to get our UU church on the band wagon to become a green sanctuary. We are going to be doing this by having an event later in September, where we will show this movie Renewal: Stories for America's Religious-Environmental Movement and plan to have a discussion after wards. We are working on collaborating with religious exploration, which is the area of the church that works with all the children. We will especially be working with the teens that have shared a passion in having the congregation become a green sanctuary. We are planning on making this an event and plan to have it be completely sustainable. All the food will be locally grown, all recycled biodegradable paper products, etc.

The hope is that this event will start a momentum going and we can develop a commitment from people interested in starting a committee. Realistically this type of project could take years and cost a lot. We have to be realistic about what things we can tackle without putting a lot of money into it. We already have reusable mugs we use every Sunday. That is example of the type of small changes we can make but other things like changing all the toilets to low flow will take a lot of money and time. Hopefully this will have a secondary impact with the teens. We are hoping to have them as leaders in this movement which will help them in developing greater feelings of self efficacy and empowerment.

So very excited about this and all the great things we are doing at the church. I am also planning to join the committee on developing a community garden at the church. Very excited. It will be so amazing to be a part of such a project.