January Sunday Offering – International Convocation of UU Women

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The International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women (IWC) is the cause of the month for January 2023! Your Sunday Offering committee requests that you support this gathering of UU women as they work to advance women’s empowerment around the world

IWC is an NGO in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, focusing on global women’s rights and empowerment. They partner with Unitarian/Unitarian Universalist women’s groups and other grassroots organizations and NGOs to advance equity for women and girls worldwide through leadership development, awareness programs, advocacy, and resources.

Recent programs include: 

  • Support for indigenous Guatemalan communities to create women’s food forests
  • Support for asylum-seeking women and their families in the U.S.
  • COVID relief – including specific support for women and girls – in India, Western Kenya, and Romania 
  • Violence awareness and prevention programs in U/UU communities in Hungary, India, the Philippines, and Romania, including training on legal rights and support for victims of violence and raising awareness among men and police
  • A leadership development program including skills training for creating small businesses in Bolivia
  • Critical support for families fleeing war in Ukraine, overwhelmingly women and children

The lingering pandemic and escalating humanitarian crises fueled by conflict and climate change have exacerbated global gender gaps, threatening to reverse decades of progress on gender equality. Around the world, a growing backlash against women’s rights is threatening even well-established freedoms and protections.

Less than a decade away from the ambitious goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. 

We know that empowering women and girls to live up to their full potential is the necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world. 

The time to commit is now. The time to act is now. Together, we can make the 21st century the century of women’s equality. 

Please support IWC as it turns the clock forward on women’s rights, accelerating progress toward gender equality. 

Thank you for your generous donations.

In addition, IWC facilitates connections between U/UU women from diverse and distant parts of the world through its twice-monthly global Tuesday gatherings. Since their launch the very first month into the pandemic, the gatherings have broadened from spiritual to more educational topics such as gender-based violence, armed conflicts and peace, and engagement for gender equality. Please consider joining us, the second and fourth Tuesday of every month, at 7 am Pacific time. For more information about IWC, please visit www.IntlWomensConvo.org.

As always, if you have an organization that you wish to nominate for Sunday cause of the month, we invite you to fill out the online Sunday Cause nomination form.