This report of the Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee (JTWTC) is an excerpt from General Session IV, General Assembly 2015.

The following final draft script was completed before this event took place; actual words spoken may vary.

Moderator: Our next report is from the Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Team. Delegates at the 1997 General Assembly asked that a group be formed to monitor and assess our progress on the journey toward becoming the anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization we profess to seek. The Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee was formed out of that request. Welcome the Rev. Jonipher Kwong and the Rev. Wendy von Courter.

Throughout the years, the JTWTC has reported on that progress in a number of manners. A snapshot of districts doing, or not doing anti-racism work. An in-depth analysis of our ministerial credentialing system. An assessment and recommendations of how we recruit, support & retain our volunteer leaders. This year we offer something a bit different. Something we hope will provide a tool for each of us to use back in our congregational, regional and collegial settings.

[Video, above]

Two years ago, delegates passed a new resolution called: Deepen Our Commitment to An Anti-Oppressive, Multicultural Unitarian Universalist Association. It called upon the UUA President to establish a vision and steps necessary to deepen that commitment. It called for the UUA Board to identify existing and new practices that would lead to greater diversity and inclusion on committees. And it called upon the JTWTC to assess the financial and staff resources currently devoted to this work, including those supporting organizations that empower marginalized populations and an analysis of these expenditures relative to other allocations.

Since that time we have been in conversation with the administration seeking more information and our own discernment on how to best meet this charge. We understand the information we seek to be necessarily quantitative and qualitative. Data gathering is in process yet revealed challenges in how to measure this important work. Our administration shared with us a shift from dedicating specific programs, staff and departments to this goal to an ethos model in which everyone is responsible for the goal, for the transformation, for progress and success. As a committee seeking to monitor and assess the journey, we affirm the commitment to an organization-wide ethos dedicated to strengthening, and rebuilding if need be, the fundamental values of our faith to be more just and that this requires continued, sustained involvement. That said, it presents a challenge to fulfilling the charge of the responsive resolution to quantify financial resources dedicated to the specific task and comparing those resources to the larger budgetary landscape. The JTWTC is committed to following through on our task as requested in the resolution and are dedicating the bulk of our fall 2015 meeting to this task.

Moderator: Thank you Wendy and Jonipher for that report.