fdo-webinar-how-to-host-a-ren-mod-owl-training-july-2016.mp4
PAT KHAN: Great. Welcome, everybody, to the July Faith Development Office Webinar, "How to Host a Renaissance Module or an Our Whole Lives Training." My name is Pat Khan. I'm in the Faith Development Office, and I'm here at my home office in Atlanta, Georgia. And presenting with me tonight is my colleague in the Faith Development Office, Dr. Melanie Davis, who is joining us from New Jersey. And Susan, who is also in the Faith Development Office, will be adding links throughout our webinar tonight in the chatbox. So that is who is here.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: And also with us, Jessica York is here. She is the Director of Faith Development Office. So welcome to Jessica, as well.
PAT KHAN: Yes, great. And Melanie, opening words?
MELANIE DAVIS: So let's start with some opening words by Parker J. Palmer from a wonderful book called The Courage to Teach. "Hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than the guest. By offering hospitality, one participates in the endless reweaving of a social fabric on which we all can depend. Thus, the gift of sustenance for the guest becomes a gift of hope for the host."
SUSAN LAWRENCE: And now we will begin.
PAT KHAN: Great, thank you. So our goals for tonight are to clarify how Renaissance modules, which are continuing education or professional development for those involved in religious education, and Our Whole Lives-- that's comprehensive sexuality education trainings-- how they're planned. And there are many similarities, but there's also some key differences, which we'll cover during the course of the webinar.
Our goal also is to share this information so that we can encourage individual congregations or groups of congregations to host a training in their area, and to tell you where the tools are to help you do that, and that we're here to help you and guide you along the way.
So I'm going to start with Renaissance modules. And one of the key things that has happened this year is that in January of 2016, Reverend Scott Taylor, who's the Director of Congregational Life, and the five regional leads had come to an agreement that each regional team will ensure that at least two Renaissance modules are offered in their region every year-- we were very excited about that-- and that the regions will provide registrar services. That's including registration online and handling money, as well as publicity on the website, et cetera. So we were very excited about this agreement.
And as an aside, I'll tell you there were other parts of this agreement just so that you know. The joint commitment of Regional Teams and the Renaissance Office, or those of us in the Faith Development Office, are that we will expand online offerings. We are currently adapting to existing modules to an online format that we're getting ready to field test actually next week, and then in August.
Another agreement was to expand the improved Renaissance module leader list. We have added, in the last year and a half or so, about 19 new leaders, and we want to continue doing that. We are in the process of updating the Renaissance Module Planning Guide, and that should be done hopefully next month. And then later in the fall, we will be doing a survey and kind of a status report on where we are with the Renaissance program. So that's the other part of our agreements with the Regional Teams.
So in a nutshell, we have six steps to planning a Renaissance module. And you'll begin to see a theme after awhile. But start planning as early as possible, and put together a team to help you plan. In fact, I chatted with a religious educator out in Arizona today. She is going to be the module coordinator for a Pacific West Region module that's going to be held next April, and she's starting now to get the planning done. So I commend her for that, and hope everybody would do things as early as possible.
The next step is basically to decide which module, and possible dates, and consult the Regional Team first to make sure that there's no calendar conflicts, or to avoid any duplication of training that might come up.
Then, the next step is to contact me in the Renaissance Office, and we'll discuss formats. We have several different formats now. We have the in-person modules, which are most typically done over the course of a weekend or sometimes Thursday through Saturday so that people can be back in their congregations on Sunday. We have online modules, and then we have a combination of the two, called hybrid modules. So we could discuss what format is feasible and available, and then that helps me to determine who the leaders that are in that area, and also to talk about potential new leaders or leaders in training.
And once you've confirmed the leaders and the dates, then it's time to get into figuring out how much you have to charge in order to cover all the costs. There is a budget worksheet in the current Renaissance Planning Guide at the link that's in the slide. And we will be, as I said, updating and revising the planning guide. So when in doubt, I usually tell people just give me a yell and we could walk through the planning and make sure that we cover all the aspects.
Most of the congregations who have taken on hosting Renaissance modules in the last couple of years have actually made a little money-- sometimes only $100 or $200, but every little bit helps. And that goes right back to the congregation or whoever is hosting it, just as an aside.
Once you've made all of the budget decisions, then the next thing is develop a timeline, and the task list based on the decisions that you've made, for example, for whether to offer home hospitality, or if the module is going to be held in a conference center, whether meals are included or catered or whether volunteers prepare. There is a lot of different moving parts of this, so those are the things that we talk through. And this is also why I suggest it's great to have a team, because then you can divide up those tasks, and it makes everything a lot simpler.
And once you have all the details-- the location, the leaders, how much you're going to charge, a registration website-- then you complete the Module Request Form, and that is what puts the module onto the UUA calendar. And from that point, publicity is kind of a shared responsibility of the Sponsoring Group, but also the region in which its being held should advertise it on their website and in their newsletters or Facebook pages. And I periodically also send to the various email lists and Facebook pages upcoming modules, and try to make sure that everybody knows where modules are happening so that we can make sure that we've got plenty of participants for all of those.
And from then on, from the time that you've got it on the calendar until the module actually happens, you're just working through that timeline and task list of what has to happen leading up to the module and after the module. And as always, I'm available to help answer any questions or guide you along or help problem solve with you.
So that, in a nutshell, is how to plan a Renaissance module. And I'm going to turn this over now to Melanie, who you might hear some of the same things, but also some of the different things for OWL training. Go ahead, Melanie.
MELANIE DAVIS: Yeah. One of the big differences between OWL and Renaissance modules is that you actually have two people at your assistance-- myself, if you are dealing with Unitarian Universalist congregations and planning, and also my peer at the United Church of Christ, Amy Johnson, is available to help folks who are planning as well.
So the best place to start if you're starting totally from scratch and you don't know what to do, you're absolutely welcome to call me. And I can help get you started. But we also have an online Planning Guide that Amy and I updated last year. It has all the details from a chart that helps you budget and understand what your costs are, to lists of materials that you may need to provide, to how to find a trainer, contacting me for a trainer's directory-- all those little details.
So it's very important to read the Planning Guide before you actually enter into the process, because in the course of that, you may decide that, you know, gee, this is a little too much to handle on my own. As a congregation, I'd like to either band together with other congregations, band together with your community-- there may be another congregation, a United church of Christ or Lutheran or Jewish community that you can partner with, or even a community youth-serving organization. So the Planning Guide will help you figure whether you want to go it alone or partner with other people.
As I said, the budget-- there's information in there about the budgeting. You need to figure out where you're going to host your training. Most of our trainings run from Friday evening at dinnertime until midday Sunday. And that means that if you're hosting in your congregational's building, you have to figure out what's going to happen on Sunday morning.
The space that you need from Friday into Saturday is just one big room, but on Sunday morning you'll need a breakout room because the group splits into two. And that can be troublesome on a Sunday morning, so you need to plan ahead about that.
In terms of picking a date, what we highly recommend is that you contact other congregations in your area or your district or your region to see if anyone else in your area is planning an OWL training. If they are too close together and too close in geography, what happens is you kind of pull participants away from each other, and then neither of the events will get a critical mass, and may have to be canceled. So always check to see what's going on. Another way that you can check is by looking at the Our Whole Lives training calendar, which is online, and looking at the events that are planned.
Once you decide that you'd like to hold a training, you contact me. And I can give you the most recent addition of our OWL Trainer Directory. And then you start calling people. I always recommend that you maybe have two weekends that you're working with so that you can increase your odds of finding trainers that are affordable, because they're in your area or they're flying in from a hub near you. If you're really committed to having one weekend only, then you might be limiting yourself in terms of trainer availability.
You will need to have two trainers. We used to say male and female, and now we're not using that gender binary anymore. What we ask is that you look for diversity in your training team. So that may mean that one person is male and one is female. It mean that one is transgender. It may be that somebody has some physical challenges and somebody else doesn't, or one is one race and one is the other race. So we're just trying to encourage diversity in the training teams so that helps model facilitator diversity when people are out in the field doing the work.
You'll need to pick somebody to handle registration. Now, registration doesn't have to be terribly complicated. We provide, on the same page as the Planning Guide, a roster. The roster has all the sheets that you'll need to track contact information, payment information, special dietary needs, lodging.
We ask that you use the roster that we provide online, because then you can give it to the trainers and it's already pre-filled with the contact information for the trainees that they need, because they'll be sending a letter in advance to every participant. It also includes a dropdown menu. In case anybody does not get approved, they can submit the roster to us after the training and it gives the names of both the people approved and the people who weren't approved, as well as the reason why not. So it's very important to use that special registration roster.
We recommend that you set a registration deadline at least two weeks in advance of the beginning of your training, and also that you mention on all of your training, registration form, and publicity that there is a chance that the training might be canceled due to low registration. That may encourage people to get travelers insurance if they're paying for airfare to come, and for congregations on a budget-- and frankly, who isn't these days-- it's good for them to have as many ways to save money as possible.
Then once you have all that in order, you need to start promoting your event. One way we ask you to do that is to start a page on your website if it's for your congregation or maybe the district, or if you're working with a partner organization on their website as well. That's a page online that will have the registration information and all the information about their contacts and whatnot.
Once that's in place, you can fill out a form on the UUA OWL web pages that will automatically feed all the information to us that we need to put your event on the calendar. The calendar's very well read. We also have an OWL Our Whole Lives Facebook page that you're welcome to promote your event on. And we would highly recommend that you let your district or your region know so that they can promote it to other congregations in your area.
Let other organizations know-- schools know, hospital therapy centers, Planned Parenthood in your area, women's centers-- anybody who serves the target population. Like, if you're offering the seven to nine and 10-12 trainee, any community professionals that work with that age group may want to take OWL training. So promote it far and abroad.
And the benefit of doing that is the more people that you get at your training-- up to 20, 22 is about the maximum that we can accommodate. But you can actually not only cover the expenses for the trainers and their travel costs and catering for your event, but also maybe make a small profit. So it behooves you to do the promotion.
OK, so what are your responsibilities? So one is to reserve the space well in advance. If you're using it at your congregation, make sure that everybody who normally schedules events during that time period has cleared the calendar for you. It's really important that you don't have people walking in and out of the areas that the OWL training is being held in.
You'll want to figure out lodging. Is there a hotel in your area that's convenient? And if so, how will people get from the hotel to the training? Sometimes people are able to offer home hospitality, which is a wonderful thing and a way to save people money when they're participating.
We do ask that you provide hotel space for the trainers themselves. They really work hard for those three days. They need downtime that's away from the participants and the training. So even if you have home hospitality for everyone else, if you can offer the trainers hotels, that will be much appreciated.
Catering-- most hosts offer Friday evening dinner. It doesn't have to be a big fancy deal. You do have to make sure that, throughout the weekend, you offer meals that accommodate special needs, including vegans and vegetarians and gluten folks and people with allergies.
When you're working with either your caterer or people in your congregation who may be providing food, they really need to understand the importance of respecting folks with allergies, because sometimes even the smallest amount of an allergen can cause a problem. So it's not just a courtesy. It's really a health and safety issue.
Sometimes you may decide it's just easier to have continental breakfast on Saturday than to have people bring things in. It might be easier to stop at a bagel place or have a caterer. That's totally up to you, as long as dietary needs are accommodated. As a host, usually it's Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday lunch, and Sunday morning for sure. Saturday can be dinner on your own, if you have places in town nearby that people can walk to and get their own food.
The supplies that you'll need to have for an OWL training are pretty minimal, usually general arts and crafts supplies, newsprint, markers, plain paper for writing on, pencils. The trainers will let you know any special supplies that they request for the peer facilitation training on Sunday morning. The cost is not significant, so you don't have to worry too much about that.
We talked about the registration roster already. We do ask that once people register, you send them some kind of confirmation that their registration has been received. Sometimes I'll get letters from people saying, hey, what's going on? And I don't have that information, because I'm not planning the training. So just some kind of brief acknowledgement that their payment has been accepted would be very helpful.
And then you do need to identify somebody, one or more people, who can be there throughout the training to be problem-solvers, to open locked doors, to get the mop out if something spills, to make sure that there's a photocopier that's available and that has toner in it. So it could be a different person on each day or the same person. It doesn't matter, but there has to be somebody that's available whenever the trainers and the participants are in the building.
So now, the trainers have some responsibilities also. In advance of the training, they will provide a list of supplies that you need. And as I mentioned, those are fairly small lists. They'll also tell you what's going on when. And generally they'll work with you. So if normally lunch is at noon on Saturday but your folks need to put it on the table at 11:30 or 1 o'clock, the trainers can work with you on that.
They'll need that roster from you so that they can send a letter to participants seven to 10 days in advance making sure that people bring the OWL curriculum with them for the appropriate level, reminding them to bring sweaters or whatnot to layer on if the room is cold-- that kind of thing.
They will arrive ahead of the training, usually at least a couple of hours, to sort of make sure that the room is set up the way they need it set up, and to meet you and go over any last-minute details. Of course, throughout the training they conduct assessments on how people are handling the material, how they are interacting with other people, whether they're respecting interpersonal boundaries, how they're doing in terms of disclosing personal information, and maybe disclosing too much. So all of that assessment goes on all weekend. So that's the trainer's responsibility. You don't have to do any of that.
The trainers will also have participants do an online evaluation. They may ask you-- and it's very helpful if you can provide-- a Wi-Fi throughout the weekend and an internet access so that people can do those online evaluations. These days, most people can share an iPhone or an iPad, but if you have a computer that people can use, that would be great as well.
The trainers will send the results of the train to us at the UUA, and we will add the folks into our database. And if there for some reason is a problem-- which doesn't happen often, but it happens sometimes; not everybody who attends a training is automatically approved to facilitate-- then the trainers will contact the Director of Religious Education or whomever supervises the person who was sent for the training, to let them know that either the person was not approved or that they were approved but on a probationary status.
So they can work under the supervision of somebody who's got more experience, and then we'll decide whether they'll go full-time in our database. And of course, the trainers are in contact with me and with Amy at the United Church of Christ if there are significant problems.
And I did want to backtrack for a minute. One of the things that we like to do is combine trainers who are UU and United Church of Christ, or one of those two and also somebody who's community so there's some diversity in terms of perspectives there on your trainers.
My slide is not advancing. Oh, there we go. OK.
So one of the things to consider when you're planning a training is whether you need to make money or whether you can afford to just break even, or whether you can afford to take a bit of a loss if you don't get as many people to register as possible. You get to set the registration fee. The UUA and the UCC do not get involved in that.
We do recommend that you have at least 10 people. So between 10 and 20 is an ideal number. Sometimes the trainers are willing to go up to 22. If you have fewer than 10 people, it's really hard to get a good training experience. So shoot for 10 to 20.
Think about if you're catering all your meals and you're paying the trainers each get about $750 apiece plus their travel expenses and hotel, so if you add up those costs, decide whether you can afford catering. Maybe you need to have folks in your congregation do sort of a potluck thing at different meals. Maybe instead of a full breakfast on Saturday morning or Sunday morning, you offer bagels and some non-gluten fruit salad or something, and yogurt and some coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Do it an inexpensive way.
You need to figure out what your process is for handling the money. If your event is handled by a district or region, usually they will handle the registration so you don't have to worry about that. If your congregation is, you need to talk to your treasurer to see what the process will be for accepting credit cards and checks, and how to keep that out of your general fund if necessary.
It's ideal to have some kind of online registration. People are just used to that, and it's easy. A lot of people don't even have checks these days. So if you can accommodate credit cards, that's terrific.
You do need to think about the possibility that if you have a two-week window for your registration deadline, when do you want your trainers to buy their airplane tickets? Of course, they're cheaper if you buy them at least 21 days in advance. But if your registration deadline is two weeks in advance, you might want to at least get travel insurance for your trainers.
Then, of course, you want to make sure that the trainers get paid. They do not appreciate being told, we'll mail the check. They actually are used to getting a check at the end of the training, so they walk home with that money in their pocket. That's a courtesy that we like to have them afforded.
What are your duties? Well, of course, you want to thank your trainers, and thank everyone who provided home hospitality and catering. Often at the last meal, everyone who's in the kitchen is invited out so that the participants can give them a round of applause and thank them for their hospitality.
So the participants will all fill out an evaluation. There are a couple questions on the evaluation about the facilities, and so if you're interested in having feedback on that, you can absolutely contact me or contact Amy, and we can get you copies of the evaluation to have that feedback.
My cursor is very slow.
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Oh, you're on mute, Pat.
PAT KHAN: I forgot that I was muted, and I forgot that my name wasn't up there. I was like, where did I go? All right, so we have plenty of time for questions, and hopefully some answers to go along with those. And if you would type those into the chatbox, then we'll be able to read them for the recording, and Melanie or I will field the questions and hopefully give you some answers.
And to give you a minute or two to type your questions in, I will just point out a couple of the similarities we talked about between Renaissance modules and OWL trainings. The same guidelines of 10 to 20 participants also holds true for Renaissance modules. And again, we can go up to 22 or maybe even 24, depending on the space that you have.
And it's also very important for the leaders of the Renaissance module to be paid when the module is done, just like OWL trainers-- so many similarities in how we approach those.
MELANIE DAVIS: Pat, it occurred to me that you probably don't have this age issue to contend with in Renaissance modules. It is important to know that when people are registering for Our Whole Lives trainings, if they are representing UU congregations, there is an age 25 minimum for registrations for elementary school and for secondary. That's the K1 and 4-6, and to 7-9 and 10-12.
We drop it down to age 21 for the young adult and adult, because we want people to be able to be peer facilitators on college campuses if they wish. So keep that in mind, that if it's elementary or secondary, there's an age 25 minimum for UU participants. If they are from the UCC or from community, they can be age 21 for any level.
PAT KHAN: You're right, that's one of the differences between Renaissance modules. So we've got a question. Let me go back up. OK, wait a second.
MELANIE DAVIS: OK, something's not on the calendar yet-- if you have submitted it online, it should be up there. And if it's not, please submit it again, because I'm the person who puts it on the calendar. And it's conceivable that it slipped by me when I was on vacation. And I would apologize for that profusely. But please submit the form again. That's the only way to guarantee that all the information we need is on the calendar.
PAT KHAN: And there was one question before Mia's. Renee asks, have you got some good general promotional material about OWL that they could use in Australia to share with other organizations?
MELANIE DAVIS: There's two pieces of promotional material on the UUA website, uua.org/re/owl. So uua.org/re/owl. And if you look under publicity tools, there is a brochure called "Sexuality is Honored Here," and that talks about why we talk about sexuality in church.
And you'll also find flyers for every age group of the age level of the curriculum. The front of the flyer has a collage of words that are used in that curriculum, and the back has the table of contents as well as OWL values and OWL assumptions. So both of those assets are free downloads that you can use.
PAT KHAN: Next two questions are also for you, Melanie-- a question about age group in Australia and New Zealand. Do you want to take that one?
MELANIE DAVIS: OK, I see the cultural information from Australia. I don't know--
PAT KHAN: It's before that one. What age group do you think would work best?
MELANIE DAVIS: Oh, for Australia. Gosh, that's probably a question that we should schedule a phone call and talk about that offline, because that's pretty specific to Australia and maybe not of general interest to other folks. In terms of special cultural information about what trainers need, I think that can be answered for any community that's coming in and probably has some impact on Renaissance modules, as well.
The trainers, when you hire them or engage them to train, that's your opportunity to talk to them and to introduce the group that you'll be working with so that you can suss out whether they're a good match for you. And the same would hold true for an international pairing of trainers and hosts. You want to have a chat for maybe half an hour and see if you're a good fit. For an international, you might want to talk a little bit longer.
But the thing is that the curricula are the curricula. The training methodologies don't change all that much. What has some flexibility ultimately in terms of Our Whole Lives is how people implement it after the training. So that's a conversation that you can have with me, certainly. But the trainers are more logistical in terms of how they're going to get the training done.
If there are language issues, of course that needs to be worked out. When we did our training in the Philippines, they were actually using four different languages because of the different communities that the participants were from, both in the training and our trainers stayed on hand to train the youth. And it's tough when you're having to use a translator. It's certainly much easier if everyone speaks English and there's no translation necessary.
Pat, are there any Renaissance module things?
PAT KHAN: Not yet, but there's another OWL question from Dan. Is there a list of UCC OWL congregations in an area? He is trying to plan for a junior high age group, and he's contacted-- I guess UU's in the area, but is there a list of UCC congregations?
MELANIE DAVIS: What I would recommend that you do-- we have on the UUA.org website, on the home page there's a Find a Congregation tool. So you just type in the town that you're in, and you can find people within 25, 50 miles of you.
I don't know if the United Church of Christ has such a thing on their website, but you could contact Amy Johnson, who is my peer there, and she could probably help you with that. You can reach her at owl@ucc.org, owl@ucc.org, or her name, johnsona@ucc.org. And she'd be happy to help you.
PAT KHAN: And Dan had a second part to the question. How have congregations worked the 25 OWL 90-minute sessions?
MELANIE DAVIS: Well, we have actually webinars on that, on best practices. There are a lot of different ways to do that. Sometimes people do one a week.
We prefer that they not be offered during worship time, because worship is an important element in faith development, but also when you have an OWL program, it's closed. The participants' parents or guardians have given permission for that, and we don't allow guests. So if you have visitors on a Sunday morning who happen to be the age of your Our Whole Lives participants, they have no peers to bond with and interact with. So you're losing potential young people and families when you have OWL during worship time. So if you're going to do it once a week, we would recommend that you do it maybe Sunday evening or another day of the week.
Sometimes people double up sessions to save a little time. Sometimes people will have retreats. So they'll do, say, one workshop on a Friday night, then do pizza and fun movies and whatnot the rest of the evening. And maybe they'll do two workshops on Saturday.
We don't recommend that people do any more than three on a weekend, because you just need time to process. You've got lots of new information. Sometimes it's sensitive information that you want to reflect on. And just funneling more and more sessions into a short amount of time is not an effective way to provide sexuality education.
If you want more information about that, Dan, please write to me, and I can give you more information about scheduling.
PAT KHAN: Great. And Melanie, Jessica wants to know if you would address how Sexuality in Our Faith is handled in trainings where participants come from different faith traditions or the secular world.
MELANIE DAVIS: Sure, good question. Thank you, Jessica, for that reminder. So just for those of you who may be less familiar with Our Whole Lives, Our Whole Lives is the secular curriculum, and Sexuality in Our Faith is the companion to Our Whole Lives which puts sex education in the context of UU values and UCC values. And so if you were offering a training only for community people, then you wouldn't have to include Sexuality in Our Faith. But if you're asking the UCC and the UUA to help promote your event, then that means that it's open to UU and UCC folks, and therefore, you need to include the Sexuality in Our Faith complement.
What can happen if you have people from other faith traditions, they can go home. Sexuality in Our Faith is generally handled on Saturday night. So other folks can stay if they want. We encourage people to stay, because if they're from other faith traditions, we would encourage them to modify Sexuality in Our Faith for their own communities. So they're always welcome to attend the Sexuality and Our Faith complement, but they don't have to.
So the one thing that is important to understand is that while we are introducing this Sexuality and Our Faith companion on Saturday evening, we will be showing the visuals that go along with the workshops on anatomy and physiology, on lovemaking, and on masturbation. Those visuals are only available for use in UCC and UU congregational programs. So while other people may be exposed to them and see them and may want to use them, they just have to understand that they will not have access to that resource.
PAT KHAN: Great. OK, Janice has a question. Are there trainers able to train in more than one age group? So for instance, if they paid for a flight to Australia, would they be able to utilize that airfare and potentially get trained for a few different age groups?
MELANIE DAVIS: Yeah, we have a number of trainers who are called all levels training. In fact, my peer at the UCC is an all-levels trainer. The problem is that people can't take the training all at once. So you can only take one level-- so there's three levels. There's the kindergarten through first grade, and four through six. That's the elementary level. The secondary is seven to nine and grades 10 to 12. That's secondary level. And then there's the young adult and adult.
So on any given weekend, you can take one of those. So you could take the elementary training, or you could take secondary, or you could take adult. If you planned a training that went, say, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for elementary and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday for secondary, conceivably you could have the same trainer do that. Although, the trainer would be darn near exhausted by the end of the first training. So that would be something that you would have to negotiate with your trainers.
But there are facilitators who are trained in every level. And yes, there are trainers who offer every level. But you have to pick one. Now, we just did a training for General Assembly in Ohio that was an all-levels training. And some people thought that meant that they could go and get trained in every level, but that wasn't the case. We were offering all levels at the same time, but with different clusters of people for each level. So we actually had six trainers for that in six separate rooms full of people.
PAT KHAN: Melanie, another question-- what other faith traditions have found the OWL program useful?
MELANIE DAVIS: That's a great question, because when you're planning a training, you may want to reach out to those groups to get more participants. I don't know who actually ends up using it, but I can tell you who's expressed interest. Lutherans, Jewish congregations-- usually the conservative Jewish congregations, because there is a reform curriculum-- Methodists, Episcopalian congregations, Quakers. So those are the faith communities that are coming to mind off the bat.
But you're not limited to faith communities. We've got Montessori schools using it. Quite a few home school associations use Our Whole Lives. Community youth-serving organizations use it. We're aware of a couple of folks using it in correctional facilities with young adults and adults.
And there are public school teachers and nurses who use bits and pieces of it. So it just pays to kind of use a scattered approach of trying to target people in your area. And then, of course, when you put it on the UUA calendar, the UCC picks it up. So you gain access to the people who are looking at their calendar, as well.
You may be in Georgia and have somebody from Nebraska for whom the date works out perfectly. You just never know where people are going to come from when you offer a training.
PAT KHAN: And another OWL question-- Mia has some non-UU and non-UCC folks interested in the training, so could you be more specific about the materials that won't be available to them?
MELANIE DAVIS: The only thing that would not be available to them would be the visuals, which is a DVD. And those are just basically, the segments are like 11 minutes long. They're line drawings for the seventh to ninth graders, and there are some photographs and video for the tenth through twelfth graders. That's the only thing that wouldn't be available.
They could buy the Sexuality and Our Faith companion volume if they want. It's $18. Anyone can purchase that. The seven to nine Sexuality and Our Faith manual includes a standalone workshop on pornography that does not appear in the Our Whole Lives curriculum. So if somebody wants to be teaching on that, they can pull that out of Sexuality and Our Faith.
Otherwise, there wouldn't necessarily be a need for community folks to buy Sexuality and Our Faith. But the pornography workshop can easily be adapted for secular audiences, even though it is located within Sexuality and Our Faith. But really, that's the only thing that they wouldn't have access to.
PAT KHAN: And I think actually you just answered Renee's question about in Australia, the Uniting Church is closest to UCC. Would they be able to use Sexuality and Our Faith? And as you said, anybody can go online and purchase that.
MELANIE DAVIS: Yeah. And also, any group that is more Christian identified could find value in the United Church of Christ half of the manual. The manual is split in half. So one half of it puts OWL in the context of UU values and principles, and the second half puts it in the context of United Church of Christ values and principles.
And so where we add discussion questions and what might be, let's say, we're talking about gender identity-- so there might be a question in Sexuality and Our Faith about, what does our first principle say about gender identity? Well, it doesn't say anything specifically, but it says we honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and we value the search for truth and meaning. So we wrap those ideas into the secular content about gender.
In the United Church of Christ half, there are some biblical references that would relate to the topic. So people can pick and choose from whichever half. Even UU folks could pick and choose from the UCC half, if they wanted to if their congregation had a more Christian-leaning feel to it. So absolutely, people from other faith traditions can borrow from that.
PAT KHAN: Great. And Jessica reminds us, but the Uniting Church would not have access to the visuals for junior and senior high unless they are officially affiliated with the United Church of Christ.
MELANIE DAVIS: Absolutely, that's correct. Absolutely.
PAT KHAN: Well, we have a little bit more time, if there are more questions. But I should have said, we're going to give you a quiz to see if you've yet memorized my email address for Renaissance modules or Melanie's OWL. But either way, owl@uua.org will go to Melanie, and renaissance@uua.org will come to me. And we are both happy to answer any questions you have or set up time to meet with you and kind of go over.
So yay, Mia has a Ren mod question. What is your Ren mod question, Mia? We're going to wait for a minute while Mia types that in. It seems like there aren't any being given in the West or the Southwest. Well, that's one of the reasons that we're very excited about the agreement with regional teams, so that there will be two offered throughout the course of a year.
I will tell you that the person who was planning ahead for next April-- that's the Pacific Southwest [INAUDIBLE] chapter that's offering the curriculum module at de Benneville Pines in California next April, and there will be others. There's also a new staff person at the Pacific West Region, Sarah Millspaugh. And she and I have been in conversation.
So hopefully there will be more, but you don't have to wait. That's probably my most important message tonight. You do not have to wait for somebody else to organize it. If there's a program, one of the modules that you really want to have, talk to the other people in your area and see who else is interested, and then talk with me and I can guide you through how to plan it.
MELANIE DAVIS: Pat, I want to say-- my cousin lives in Southern California and is a UU, and spends a lot of time at Camps at de Benneville Pines. It's her favorite place in the world, and it was so scary when there were forest fires coming near it. But the camp was preserved. It's in great shape. So if anybody has an opportunity to take your Renaissance module out there, it would be a lovely opportunity.
PAT KHAN: Yeah, very good. All right. Well, if you think of another question after we get off, you know exactly who to email.
So let us proceed. I've got some closing words to share, and then a few housekeeping things about upcoming modules. The closing words are from the UUA's Worship Web, words by Susan Karlson. "We leave blessed by our connections to one another, to the spirit of life. Walk lightly that you see the life that is below your feet. Spread your arms as if you had wings and could dance through the air. Feel the joy of the breath in your lungs and the fire in your heart. Live to love, and be a blessing on this earth."
And next month in August, our wonderful Faith Development Director, Jessica York, will be doing a recap of the Innovation in Faith Development Roundtable Meeting that was held in Boston in April. It will be a really cool webinar, so we encourage you to go ahead and register for that. The link is on the slide, and Susan will put it into the chatbox. So you could register for that right now. It's all set and ready to go for you.
And at that same link, you will also find all of the webinars that we've been doing. We've been doing them for about two years now. So those all have been recorded. They're there, available with the slides, and transcripts have been added as well.
So I think that is about everything. I'm just trying to look-- there were a couple more things in the chatbox, and several people saying thank you. And we give you a big thank you for attending tonight, and we really appreciate it. And it really was very exciting to have people from Australia on our webinar tonight.
MELANIE DAVIS: Yeah.
PAT KHAN: So I am going to go ahead and turn off the recording now. And once again, thank you all for attending.
MELANIE DAVIS: Thank you. Bye-bye.