Further Justice Work

Reducing Food Insecurity

Every Sunday Chalice collects food for local food banks Manna (https://www.mannaconejo.org) and Harbor House (www.harborhouseto.org/).

  

Feeding Hands

Feeding Hands is a small Chalice crew currently providing hot take-out dinners for Harbor House one Tuesday a month (www.harborhouseto.org/) to distribute to those in our community who are needy.  If you are interested in joining this effort please contact: justiceleaders@chaliceuu.org.

Several Chalice volunteers also pick up and distribute contributions from Food Forward, (www.foodforward.org), a Southern California organization on a mission to reduce food waste and increase access to healthy fruits and vegetables through food recovery. Donations are delivered to some of our local families and to Adelante.

Gender Equality & Reproductive Health

As Unitarian Universalists (UUs), we not only open our doors to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, we value diversity of sexuality and gender and see it as a spiritual gift. We create inclusive religious communities and work for LGBTQ justice and equity as a core part of who we are. 

Decisions about children, families and sexuality are some of life’s most profound. We advocate not only for the freedom of those choices in each person’s life journey, but also for the ability of all families and communities to realize a sense of wholeness with regard to their sexual and reproductive lives. We create safe and healthy environments for children in our faith communities and campaign publicly for just and compassionate laws for family planning, reproductive health, and gender equality.

UU The Vote

Vote Forward Letters to Georgia

In 2020, we helped fight voter disenfranchisement by getting out the vote in Georgia. Three congregations: Chalice UU, UU Church of Ventura, and UU Church of Santa Paula collaborated in a GOTV letter-writing campaign targeting traditionally under-represented registered voters in Georgia who were unlikely to move soon and unlikely to vote. By helping under-represented voters get to the polls in Georgia we helped ensure that the electorate reflected the true preferences of the state’s people. We raised $2,610 in cash donations for stamps and envelopes and received matching funds of $7,830 from the Spirit Level Foundation.

Chalice UU joined the UUtheVote effort in September 2020

Chalice joined with UU Ventura and UU Santa Paula to write letters for UUtheVote. UU Ventura received the grant and it required 15,000 letters.

Social Justice leaders formed a team and held zoom calls to recruit writers and keep them informed. Between 7/13/20 and 8/25/20 we led a team of 30 writers, and ultimately produced 7,000 letters to voters in Georgia.

On 9/1/20 we began a short writing campaign to Nevada which was completed in a few weeks.

All the letters were mailed to Georgia, and the Nevada letters were driven to mail boxes inside Nevada!

Now with the 2020 Election results in, we are grateful we reminded members in those states to vote and hope we helped make a difference.

UU the Vote – Faith, Love, and Action. Together.