No. 47 Globalization

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Nancy Wrenn)

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

If we were to reduce the world population to a village of 1,000 inhabitants, this would be our reality:

480 men; 520 women

200 people would control 75% of the wealth; another 200 would receive just 2% of it

70 people would own automobiles, some of these more than one

roughly 330 people would have access to clean, safe drinking water

335 of the adults in this village would be illiterate

While economic globalization has helped some people attain higher standards of living, it has marginalized and impoverished many others and has resulted in environmental degradation and the depletion of natural resources. The benefits of economic globalization have been inequitably distributed and have not reached many people around the world. Our vision of the world as an interconnected web challenges us to turn from self-serving individualism toward a relational sense of ourselves in a global community, and toward practices that help create economic structures designed to serve the common good. We are called to bring our Unitarian Universalist Principles to our understanding of economic globalization and to help mitigate its adverse effects.

UU Statement of Conscience, June 2003

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
This is our statement of conscience. It was written, discussed, and endorsed to help clarify our religious identity as a community and as individuals. How am I connected to this process? What do I gain from it? What do I lose from it? And what can I do to align myself with this statement of conscience; what is its personal meaning for me?

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

People in high places make me really angry. What makes me angry is that they are so callous. . . when you see uncaring people in high place, everyone should be mad as hell.”
William Sloane Coffin (from a NOW interview with Bill Moyers)