Dear Roundtable Members:

We hope you’re having a great start to 2012. The Roundtable is looking forward to another year of education and formation dedicated to deepening the capacity of and supporting the spiritual growth of diocesan social action directors. In order to make this a reality, we need your support this year.

In 2011, the Roundtable received official status as an independent association listed in the Official Catholic Directory. Since summer 2009, the board has been moving toward this step; after finding a new home for the Roundtable’s office, hiring a part-time staff person, and following up on ASSOCIATION paperwork for many months, the process is now complete, and we are thankful! Throughout this time, we’ve continued to be financially sound and with our official status, we’ll be able to seek foundation grant funding which would lower costs to attend Roundtable events and provide additional training opportunities.
It was a year of many other highlights, including:

• Launching a new webinar series, with five scheduled webinars through this summer. The first two of the series, on the Constitution & Catholic Social Teaching and Building Capacity were incredibly popular with members and their diocesan associates, and were recorded and posted on our website for later viewing by members.
• Hosting a successful 25^th anniversary Social Action Summer Institute in New Orleans with a focus on the dignity of work and supporting workers today, along with sessions on promoting human life & dignity, global solidarity and parish partnerships, white privilege and racism, building a constituency for environmental justice, and more.
• Awarding the second Servant of Justice Award and the 25^th Harry A. Fagan Award in conjunction with a Symposium focused on addressing fear with prayerful conversation.
• Continuing to share best practices through the Virtual Roundtable listserv, which are archived online. Discussions in 2011 included topics such as Lenten programs on life and dignity; events policies; disaster outreach practices; forming a diocesan leadership team; and much more.

The upcoming year holds many important events for us as well, including:

• Our February Symposium on The Constitution & Catholic Social Teaching: A Healthy Tension (Thanks be to God!) featuring Dr. Maryann Love, Dr. Dan Finn, and Fr. Bryan Hehir, and honoring Jan Benton with the Harry A. Fagan Award and Msgr. Marv Mottet with the Servant of Justice Award.
• Our Social Action Summer Institute which will take place July 29-Aug. 1 at Bellarmine University in Louisville. The Advanced Track theme will focus on domestic and international poverty, with the final day focused on transformative learning led by JustFaith Ministries.
• Quarterly issues of the Roundtable Report newsletter on relevant themes with resources helpful to your work, along with additional blog postings throughout the year.
• Continued “round tabling” among our membership on topics of concern and interest, as well as mentoring opportunities for new Roundtable members by more experienced colleagues.
• A strategic planning process during this summer’s board meeting, which will more clearly define the Roundtable’s goals and programs in the coming years.
• Participation in a voice valued by the Bishops at the meetings of the USCCB’s International and Domestic Policy Committees.  The importance of your work is recognized that the Roundtable is invited to be an observer at these meetings.

In order for all of this great work to truly thrive, we need your active participation. We are so thankful for all of your previous support of the Roundtable. Your return of the enclosed dues notice will help us continue to build a vital organization to serve and be an advocate for diocesan social action directors around the country.

Remember to make dues checks payable to The Roundtable (as we are now our own legal entity) and mail them to: The Roundtable, 1225 Otis Street NE, Washington, DC 20017-2516.

Blessings to you,

Scott Cooper, Chair
Diocese of Spokane

Coordinators Note: Dues Form_2012
Above is a dues form that we ask you to print off and return with your dues. Please make sure to share your most up-to-date contact information as I am in the process of updating our membership list as well as email listserv, and can include your new staff members and remove those who have transitioned to other work.

I am so thankful for your continued support of the Roundtable and its future work. I look forward to working with you in the future & I hope to see many of you in February in DC and in July in Louisville. More information about SASI, which will focus on domestic and international poverty, and include a day on transformational learning with JustFaith Ministries, will be coming soon
If you have any questions or concerns, or just want to say hello, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thank you! Jenn Svetlik, Roundtable Coordinator

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Announcements, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.