The Volunteer Development Sparks Module is a new training for religious educators. This course registers on the UUA website, check the calendar for the current offering.
The Volunteer Development module will help you:
- Develop skills for recruiting and equipping volunteers and nurturing their spiritual engagement and health;
- Assist volunteers in connecting with and developing quality relationships with people of all ages and across neurological and other differences;
- Teach volunteers to center inclusion and practice pastoral presence in their volunteer work;
- Understand the implications of new models of religious education on volunteer recruitment, training, and retention; and
- Apply a faith development lens not only to the work that volunteers do but to how you engage volunteers in that work.
Training Requirements
The Volunteer Development Sparks module is an online learning experience comprised of five 2.75-hour webinars with reading and other assignments for each session. Credit will be offered for full participation in the module. Full participation includes:
- Online attendance at five 2.75-hour sessions
- Reading and reflection to prepare for each session
- Completion of final project
- Submission of final evaluation within a week of the ending of the module
Meet Your Facilitators
J.L. (Jen) Shattuck is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist and longtime early childhood professional turned religious educator. She’s passionate about helping UU churches welcome and support their very youngest congregants and currently serves on staff at both the Unitarian Church of Barnstable on Cape Cod and at Sanctuary Boston. She is the author of The Tending Years, a book for those caring for preschool-age children, and is also the creator of Ellery Churchmouse, a video series for UU kids and their families.
Rev. Sierra-Marie Gerfao is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist and has been a religious educator and a religious education consultant in congregations from one coast to the other for twenty-three years. In the words of Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, Sierra-Marie believes that the purpose of religious education is “humanization in a dehumanizing world.” She lives in New Haven, Connecticut and currently serves as half-time Director of Family Ministries at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury. The other half of the time, she has a ministry of public theology, which involves public action and public reflection.
