I seem to be having problems with both GA and District Assembly this year. Must be going through a cranky phase.
Anyway, dear readers, I went through the brochure for the CMwD meeting again and saw that there is a Young Adult/Full-Time Student rate of $45. But guess what, dear friends; your meals are not included and you still have to pay for your room.
So not only do you still have to pay for a room, pay to get to St. Louis and pay $45 registration, you have to pay for ALL your food. So I guess the District is telling you to bring your own or starve.
Ain't being a UU grand?????
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5 comments:
Not my district...
But I've organized events. Not for UU groups, but no matter. Costs get covered--must get covered--by someone, somehow, somewhere.
Registration, as such, often covers the bare bones. Hotel meals are very overpriced. So in offering a student/YA rate, you've been allowed to make the choice. You can pay full tab and help pay at the marked up rate for food, or you can fend for yourself--far more frugally.
I'm a student too.
But I'm not expecting that someone else will underwrite me to eat. If the organizers wanted to, they could ASK for people to help fund "scholarships" to allow students and others.
What were you expecting? Registration AND meals for $45?
The usual scifi convention way is to eat fast food and/or bring a loaf of bread and peanut butter. Then eat out for a couple of meals that really matter if you like.
It would be non-awesome to eat like that every day, but for a couple of days it works fine.
Also, at one of theCSO's cons, there's a lady who cooks and brings big pots of chili and chicken tetrazinni for the volunteers, but you have to put in some work to get the nicer food. Some people make the tradeoff, some don't.
CC
For what it's worth, the youth conferences in my district that don't require a guest speaker and depend on youth to prepare food, provide workshops, and do the Sunday morning "miracle" clean-up.
The costs for this "bare-bones" conference is in the $30 to $40 range. This covers meals, snacks, a commemorative event t-shirt, a "mug book" (a photocopied "zine" with the names, faces, and contact info of all event attendees). Other than a few rallies where a local rock band plays for the Saturday night dance, there are no guest speaker or guest talent expenses.
A "working conference" like the Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) Leadership Development Conferences (LDC) or Spirituality Development Conferences (SDC) costs a bit more. Because all youth and adult advisors are attending a weekend-long intense training workshop, it's not realistic to depend on youth participants to prepare their meals or provide other logistics support. The typical LDC/SDC schedule is Friday 5 PM to 10 PM, Saturday 8 AM to 10 PM, and Sunday 8 AM to noon. The workshop working costs include the honorarium and travel expenses for the workshop presenters. The overall costs for this in my district is in the $150 to $200 range.
From the costs of your district's annual meeting, I'm guessing the higher costs come from the keynote speaker costs (travel, honorarium) and off-site meeting costs (using hotel meeting rooms instead of using host church meeting rooms).
One additional observation -- I've seen ongregations fund the conference travel costs for staff members (e.g. minister, DRE, etc).
However, it's common for many congregations to expect church volunteers to "pay" for the opportunity to volunteer when it comes to attending a district meeting or GA. Perhaps the travel costs of volunteers should be a congregational budget line-item?
Of course, if a congregation paid your way to GA, they may have certain expectations for you.
They may insist that you attend all 15 hours of plenary at GA. They may give you guidance on how you should vote on certain issues so you represent the congregation's views and your own conscience.
Steve-
My church has hosted youth conferences and indeed paid for it in that range. But we couldn't have done that if we'd had a real selection of workshops. I don't know what y'all's churches are like, mine could have maybe three workshops going at the same time, and one would have a limit of maybe 50 people and one about 30. Churches don't have conference rooms of the right sizes. (And I go to a fairly large church.)
For me, workshops are the best part, and necessary as different churches have different issues.
Besides, it is not a thin line, but a wide band between that business traveler assumptions TRA used to get his numbers and everybody sleeping on the floor of a church.
CC
who has been trying to sell her youth on "BucCONeer, the pirate con" for three solid years, but they are too serious for me. Their last con was CONsequences, and we talked about torture and social justice.
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