Message from your Board President, Kay Crider

Dear Elioteers,

Spring is here and Eliot is well on its way to a summer of great camps!

Your board met in January and April to discuss and move forward on individual, committee, and board work on behalf of Eliot since the start of the year.  Many of you who are leaders of programs for our 2023 summer camps participated in the Leadership Retreat on April 1 to share ideas between camps and hear about ways you can support one another in your roles. Several members of the board provided facilitation of breakout groups. A huge thank you to Ward Ramsdell for conceiving the idea and, along with Samaya Oakley,  making it happen. 

Bonnie McDaniel and Lauren MacNeill, co-chairs of the Restoring Right Relations Task Force, led a session at the Leadership Retreat. Their team will continue to work to normalize that process so that it is woven into the fabric of camp and feels accessible to all campers. 

In anticipation of Bev Hesterberg’s retirement on January 31, 2024, we have hired Calyn McLeod as Registrar-in-Training to shadow Bev this year. Calyn has been coming to Eliot for a decade and is multi-talented and highly organized. She has been a presenter at Creative Arts, the lead for July tie-dye, and she’ll be a Dean at this summer’s Creative Arts camp. Give her a warm welcome at camp as she steps into this role! 

At our April board meeting, the board recommitted to its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work as a group. In recent years we have had DEI training, engaged in an Intercultural Development Inventory, worked in pairs with another Eliot board member outside of board meetings to discuss concepts and take action, and done individual and group work outside of the board with either our UU congregations, in our workplace, or both. You can read more about the origins and history of Eliot’s commitment in this area in the article from the Program Committee elsewhere in this newsletter. 

We continue to hold multi-platform board meetings - below is a snapshot from April 22, 2023.

Please feel free to reach out to any Board member with questions, comments or suggestions for Eliot – we are happy to hear from you! You can email me (kaycrider@me.com), any other board member (check the camp directories), or reach out to registrar@eliotinstitute.org and we’ll get the message.

Many Elioteers continue to step up to help us live out our mission: to create and support an intentional, inclusive community of celebration, friendship, and joy with opportunities for exploration, spirituality, and growth for Unitarian Universalists, their families and friends. 

Thank you for all you have done–both recently and over the years–to support our beloved Eliot community!

With love & gratitude,

Kay Crider, Board President