Guest speaker Alan Khazei (center) congratulated interns in the diocese’s Micah Project and Relational Evangelism programs, pictured here with the programs’ directors, Jason Long (left, second row) and the Rev. Arrington Chambliss (right).
Episcopal City Mission (ECM) supporters heard a call to “big citizenship” from Alan Khazei and celebrated the past year’s social justice work, including CORI reform and British Petroleum disinvestment, during the organization’s annual meeting on June 8.
The dinner event at Boston University showcases programs and organizations funded through ECM’s grants programs. It also brings together parish delegates and supporters from across the diocese to learn about its work. This year about 230 people attended.
Khazei, founder of the City Year youth service corps and a candidate last year for U.S. senator, gave a keynote speech that echoed his campaign’s theme of “big citizenship”—what he described as acting on behalf of others out of a renewed sense of personal responsibility and common purpose instead of looking to big government or big business for answers to society’s problems.
“So in a world that needs more mercy, that needs more purity of heart, that needs more peace, even as we celebrate all that you have done tonight, we are at the same time called to do even more,” he said. He asked for increased volunteerism and charitable giving and urged his listeners to “spread the call of service far and wide.”
“As you begin another year with this tremendous organization, I’d ask you to double down on your efforts,” he said. “Keep it up. We need you.”
Reporting on ECM’s public policy efforts, executive director Ruy Costa cited as a success the pending reform of the state’s Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system. He said ECM-funded advocacy groups have worked for a decade to call attention to the system’s discriminatory aspects. “Now in 2010 we have a bill that means something,” Costa said. (CORI reforms have passed both the House and Senate and are now in conference committee.)
In coming months, Costa said, ECM will join other groups in protesting state budget cuts that they believe unfairly take away social services for undocumented immigrants.
Costa also announced, to applause, that ECM’s investment manager, Trillium Assets Management, has divested from British Petroleum in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill. “We want to make our investments work for good as they do well,” he said.
Pictured with Bishop Gayle E. Harris (center) are ECM’s social justice awards winners (from left) Anne Shumway, the Rev. Deborah Little Wyman, Diane Casey Lee and Frank Butler.
ECM’s annual social justice awards went to Frank Butler of Trinity Church in Topsfield for his decades of community and church service; the Rev. Deborah Little Wyman, street ministry organizer and advocate, and the founder of Ecclesia Ministries and Common Cathedral in Boston; Anne Shumway of St. James’s Church in Cambridge for her social work with those who are hungry and homeless; and Diane Casey Lee of the Cape Cod Council of Churches for her efforts to help churches bridge gaps between social services and the people in need of them.
--Tracy J. Sukraw