include support for the Groundwork collective of trainers, DRUUMM
YaYA, and future identity-based youth and young adult ministries.

As representatives of the larger UU youth community, we
value feedback, and will be setting up a blog for that purpose.
Thoughts, memories, rants, and love notes are appreciated and
welcomed.

In Faith,

YRUU Steering Committee"  </lj-cut>

    My first reaction was sadness and the urge to write a long letter about how important YRUU has been to my life and to the lives of many people I care about, and to send this letter to... everybody, to Bill Sinkford, Gini Courter, steering committee, the youth office, the board....
and I may still do that, however upon some reflection (and reading some other people's well thought out reactions)  perhaps that is not the correct course of action.  YRUU was, and still is in many ways, a huge part of my life, the experiences I had, the people I met, and the things I learned through YRUU have shaped who I am in a way that nothing else in my life has.  I have seen it as a community that can save lives, a place where people who feel like outcasts everywhere else can find acceptance, and where important issues can be brought out in the open for discussion.  For me it has been a place to meet people from accross the country, to examine my place in the world, to talk about big issues like racism in an open way, a place where I felt not only accepted, but in charge, like I could actually do something.  I have forged many of my strongest ties through YRUU.   The thought of YRUU not existing to provide the so dearly needed services to current and future youth saddens my like little else.  But I do not think letter writing will help, except perhaps for personal catharsis.  the decision has been made and it is up to us to make the best of it.  One of my major problems is that when common ground 1 happened, there was a common ground 2, LRY was disbanded, but YRUU was created, what creation is coming out of this decision?  will there be a common ground 4 creating a new youth organization?  or will YRUU just be expected to exist without funding?  now I know that the UUA is only cutting funding to contenental stuff (steering commitee, youth council etc.) but it is a symbolic disowning of all of YRUU. 
    not that YRUU is perfect, far from it, my time working on both district and continental YRUU stuff showed me that, but it has a valuble role that must be filled by something in its absence.  YRUU may not be doing its job properly, but neither are our congregations, there is little support in our congregations for youth and even less for young adults, and while the consultation on ministry to and with youth, many actions on the part of Bill Sinkford, the UUA board, and steering commitee are trying to put the focus on congregations their efforts are not working.  Removing funding from YRUU will not encourage churches to better support their youth, it will simply eliminate part of the one place youth are supported.  as someone who went to church every sunday, and genuinly ejoyed it, it wasn't the same as YRUU, I liked church, I liked youth group, but I loved cons.  church made me feel warm, it wrapped me up in singing and poetry, but it didn't make me do anything, it didn't make me reconsider my place in the world, it didn't make me step outside my comfort zone, it didn't put me in leadership positions, it didn't let me run worship, it didn't let me stay up untill 3am discussing religion and politics, it didn't provide me with oppurtunities to run workshops,  or a network of people that span the country.  YRUU did. 
    But the question we need to be asking ourselves is not what can we do to get the UUA to change its mind, but what can we do to make youth programming better? why was YRUU not benifiting the UUA? why arn't our churches supporting our youth? and, most importantly, what can we do to change it?  I fully understand the outcry this will cause (reminds me of the outcry after con con was cancelled, except on a much larger scale) but I want to propose that instead of getting extreamly angry we try and create something new.  if you're mad that youth arn't being supported, do something about it!  if you're upset that this may cause the end of YRUU, that conferences will ceice, make sure they don't!  talk to your district youth steering commitee, talk to your congregations, talk to your friends, clearly something is wrong in our faith and getting our money back is not the issue. the issue is that youth and young adults are not supported by our religion, that UU youth often don't think they have a religion or don't associate with unitarian universalism, that our faith grows not from educating and keeping youth involved, but through converting unhappy middle aged white middle class americans, that our churches are not a welcoming place for many who could get so much from our faith, that people burn out (the fact that most of the youth who were extreamly involved in UUism with me have since become frustrated and uninvolved or have left the faith all together).  Our religion is supposed to be about acceptance, about support and community, but folks, we are failing.  If we cannot even support our own youth, how can we expect to change the rest of the world?  if our own youth do not identify with us, how can we expect to grow?  if we cannot change, how can we expect to survive? 

this is just my jumbled up thoughts as of right now.  this is coming from a white, female, young adult, who is a life-long UU, a person who was involved in congregational affairs, choir, RE, youth group, district YRUU, DYSC, youth programming at Ferry Beach, youth trip to transylvania, continental YRUU, and GA; someone who has sat through countless hours of meetings about youth stuff on every level, who has left meetings in tears, who has spent more time working on UU things than anything else pritty much, who has been to trainings and workshops galore, who can spout acronyms like no other.  I do not mention these things to sound cocky, but just to illustrate how much of an impact a decision like this would have had on my life if it had been made just 6 years earlier, I would be a completely different person, and I do not think in a good way.  I, for a time, embodied what the UUA board is saying youth should be, I was involved on all levels, I had a supportive congregation with a strong youth group, but that wasn't what made the biggest impact on me, even that left me wanting something else, something else that was almost fulfilled by YRUU, but not intirely, we need something else, we need creation and not distruction.  I have read some interesting opinions already, but I would be interested in hearing what everyone else has to say.

in faith and struggle,
Flo