General Assembly: GA Presentations: Presenter views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the UUA.

Ethical Leadership and Healthy Communities

General Assembly 2006 Event 2069

Speakers: Dr. Michael Tino, Kimberlee Tomczak

This workshop was about developing a Code of Ethics for a congregation, a covenant group, a committee, or any sub-group within the congregation. Most importantly, it was about following an intentional, inclusive and caring process in developing the code.

The presentation was lightly attended, possibly because the presenters chose to use the recently developed Young Adult Code of Ethics for Peer Leaders as a model for the process and as an example of a completed code. What we need to understand, though, is that that process is worth studying as a guide for the development of any Code of Ethics. The Young Adult Code is also worth studying as an example of how any such code might be framed as well as for the specific areas that it addresses—and those it doesn't.

Dr. Michael Tino is the Director of Young Adult and Campus Ministry for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Kimberlee Tomczak is the Youth and Young Adult Programs Coordinator for the Central Midwest District of the UUA. They worked with the team that developed the new Young Adult Code of Ethics and are now working to educate others about that Code and, more widely, about the process which the team developed and which is worth applying and emulating in similar tasks.

For more information on the code and process visit the website of the Young Adult and Campus Ministry.

Reported by Bill Lewis; edited by Jone Johnson Lewis.