By John Reschovsky, UUSS Delegate to SiCM
Among my earliest memories of UUSS, when I first came nearly fifty years ago, are the monthly collections for SICM. Our SICM rep would wander around at coffee hour with a tattered old shoe box marked SICM, asking everyone to throw in a few bucks. The Schenectady Inner City Ministry, and more recently named the Schenectady Community Ministries, SiCM, was born in 1967 as a collaboration of local Protestant and UU churches “to be a presence for well-being and peace for the impoverished and disenfranchised communities of Schenectady.” Over the years, SiCM evolved into a fully Interfaith organization providing critical social services and advocacy for justice in our community. Known largely for its food pantries, SiCM has also been a leader in addressing many other community needs, including public health, education, housing and community building. Many local public service organizations owe their origins to initiatives that SiCM started and later spun off. And Schenectady Urban Farms, founded by our own Melissa MacKinnon, is now a vibrant part of SiCM.
Last week, at a special SiCM event, Executive Director, the Reverend Amaury Tañón-Santos and SiCM Board President Shae Fitzgerald (who grew up at UUSS) reported that, as a part of an extensive strategic planning process, the organization has chosen to change its name to the Sycamore Collaborative. In making this announcement, they noted that the tree metaphor appears across countless faith and spiritual traditions: “Trees are beacons of wisdom and life. Bridging the ground and the sky, they connect us to where we’ve been and where we’re going. They can house generations of experience in their rings, and they can contain whole communities of creatures, providing shelter and food…”
Continuing, they elaborated that “we are a tree present throughout New York, one with multicolored bark, enduring strength, powerful reach, a wide, shading canopy, and circular pods that release innumerable seeds, spread far on the wind.
“We are a collaborative– striving to work in synchronicity with our community to better identify a strong network of services and resources for all who need it in our reach. We draw inspiration for our work from spiritual and wisdom traditions across the spectrum of belief and human experience. Much like the shape of a sycamore pod, we’ve come full circle in our organizational identity, and we bring our whole selves to the responsibility of living up to this new name and all it represents. Lastly, the pun is intentional– we are truly SiCM… more!”
Congratulations to the Sycamore Collaborative as they move into this next chapter of their long and accomplished history. We should take pride in our long-standing role as part of this significant force for doing good and creating justice in our Schenectady community.