Flower SqUUare Task Force

Goals and Objectives

We are a group of First Unitarian members building an intentional urban UU community in the neighborhood surrounding Children's School of Rochester, known as the "Pearl-Meigs" neighborhood. Some of our members live in the community. Others are connected to it through our service projects. All of us are committed to becoming genuine members of this community. We hope that our relationships and work will lead to a deeper engagement of our entire church with the unique urban needs and struggles of Rochester.

What We Do

Our work falls into three areas: Building Relationships, Serving and Strengthening the Neighborhood and Creating Intentional Community. Some members of our group are involved in all three, but most focus their attention and time mainly in one of the three.

Building Relationships
Our approach is relational. We work hard to build relationships first and then let our work and activity emerge from that. To this end, we engage in the following awareness raising and relational work.

Promote the intentional community and its aims within the First Unitarian community.
Build a network of church members who live in and serve the "Pearl- Meigs" neighborhood.
Explore and educate ourselves about the principles of intentional living.
Deepen the existing relationship with the principal and staff of the Children's School of Rochester to identify and address the needs of the student population and their families.
Identify and address the unique needs of the refugee families of the Children's School of Rochester.
Develop friendships with the neighbors, churches and organizations in the "Pearl-Meigs" neighborhood.
Forge alliances with other UU urban and rural intentional communities and sustainable living projects.
Host regular "urban awareness" forums at First Unitarian.

Serving and Strengthening the Neighborhood
Our relationships have lead us to develop the following service projects:

Adult Life Skills tutoring for the refugee parents of the Children's School of Rochester.
Refugee family social programs, picnics, World Refugee Day celebration, and sharing of community relationships.
Making and sewing quilts and other handmade products available for sale.
Purchases of homes in the Pearl-Meigs neighborhood for members of First Unitarian Church, and/or for rental to refugee families, or families from the Children's School of Rochester.
Development of evening support group for refugee parents and parents from the Children's School of Rochester.

Volunteer and creative opportunities abound! We will keep creating new projects together.

Creating Intentional Community
The Intentional Community Movement has a long history of carving out creative ways for groups of people to live together in intentional and interdependent ways. Most people think of "hippie communes," but modern arrangements are quite diverse. Rather than a bunch of people living in a single house, we envision a "neighborhood approach," with numerous First Unitarian members owning or renting homes in the Pearl-Meigs (Flower SqUUare) neighborhood. This cluster of Unitarian-Universalists will work together on common social service efforts, meet for periodic common meals, create a community garden, share tools, hold a neighborhood Soul Matters spiritual study group and support each other in living out their UU values-maybe even start a new urban UU worshipping community in Rochester! The possibilities are endless. Figuring it out together is all part of the excitement.

To learn more about our vision of creating an intentional UU community, contact:

Pamela Jacobstein: pjacobstein@yahoo.com | 738-2558
Anne Leone: Aleone44@gmail.com | 490-9681

December 12 2011