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In this month's edition of Society Spotlight, we will be learning about the Westchester Community for Ethical Culture (WCEC), courtesy of the WCEC Program Committee. Thanks for the group effort everyone!
Society name: Westchester Community for Ethical Culture
Year it was founded: 1921
Current president: Norma Vavolizza
What Ethical Culture means to your society:
"The Westchester Community for Ethical Culture (WCEC) is one of the 2nd generation of Ethical Societies. Our group was started 100 years ago by members of the New York Society for Ethical Culture who lived in Westchester County (just north of New York City) and wanted a local program that would provide an Ethical Culture Sunday School experience for their children and for other children in the area. The commitments to provide educational experiences, foster ethical community, and engage with people beyond our own group have been integral to WCEC’s identity.
Related to that commitment is a “can do” attitude: we see that when we work together for the common good we promote a more ethical world and enhance our own lives as well. We strive to put “deed before creed” in all we do, to address important ethical concerns in our community and beyond, and to recognize and celebrate the unique worth of all people."
An example of what you're doing to address a key issue affecting your community:
"Our lives have been profoundly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a community that thrives on interpersonal engagement, having to move from meeting face-to-face to meeting via Zoom was difficult - especially for our children and families and for our partnerships with other groups in our community.
Now we are working to turn that around and make new opportunities for in-person gatherings. We have renovated our meeting spaces to make them more appealing and usable, increased our social media engagement, and improved our technological capacities for hybrid meetings and higher-quality recordings. Our Program Committee has developed a schedule of programs and events that will encourage people - both familiar and not yet familiar - to come to our Meeting House and participate in our activities. The result has been a restructuring of our program offerings with an eye toward attracting a wide range of participants and this has already inspired engagement with a number of people who had not previously participated. We now have a monthly schedule that includes pancake breakfasts that are primarily social in nature and include special programs for children, a Saturday evening speaker series, board game nights, and member-led, small group discussions that we call Living Ethics Roundtables that encourage us to respond to moral dilemmas and ethical challenges. We continue to have traditional Sunday Platform meetings each month with talks by our clergy leader or an invited guest speaker. On the horizon is a return to our Friday Films documentary series, and a variety of musical programs. We continue to have Colloquy meetings on a weekly basis as well as a Book Group, dinner gatherings, and online discussions. And all of these programs offer enriched opportunities for ethical action."
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