1. Introduction by Harriett
After a wonderful Assembly last year, the staff jumped right back to work together with the Board and the Program Advisory Groups on finishing up priority directions to help us focus our work at the national office. The strategic plan document represents hours of meetings and compiling key insights from multiple voices. Thank you to everyone who participated in the planning process.
As we journey toward our 150th Anniversary in 2019, this planning process has helped us to gain clarity on relevant areas to ensure deep footprint of United Methodist Women and allow for our mission of fostering spiritual growth, developing leaders and advocating for justice. We are shifting to implementation, and do this with our Purpose as our foundation and leveraging our position as an agency of the church in our own right. To remain a refreshed, vibrant and relevant mission movement, the planning document outlines 6 recommendations around national office focus and priorities for

2. Telling Your Mission Story

3. Six of the eight ladies who started out on a mission journey that we’re still traversing when they organized the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society March 23, 1869, at Tremont Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston. Two of them missed the photo op (Mrs. H.J. Stoddard and Mrs. O.T. Taylor) and these seated we know as Mrs. Thomas A. Rich, Mrs. Edwin W. Parker, Clementina Butler, Mrs. Lewis Flanders. Standing left to right Mrs. Thomas Kingsbury and Mrs. William B. Merrill.

4. And they raised money to send Isabella Thoburn, a teacher, (here with her protégé, Lilavati Singh.

5. And Dr. Clara Swain, a physician, to India to serve the women of that nation, who at the time could not to to school or been seen by male doctors. You know the story.

6. And women organized

7. And organized—like this Issei Fujinkai, a women’s society in a Japanese Methodist Church in Oakland-California in 1925.

8. And established schools to prepare women for mission, like the Northwest Training School, and Scarritt College

9. And they educated themselves for mission, segregated, according the ways of the time, here at a Central Conference School of Christian Mission in Chicago, Illinois, in 1930.

10. And they worked against racial injustice because of eliminating its devastating impact on women, children, youth and their families was a part of their Gospel call to mission with women, children and youth. Here Thelma Stevens, on the left, national staff of the Woman’s Division of Christian Service, looks at Pauli Murrary, seminal work, funded by the division, “States Laws on Race and Color.” It was a seminal work and was influential in the work of lawyers arguing the Brown v. Board of Education case in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregated education was inherently unequal.

11. And they educated themselves for mission together, here in a Southern Regional School of Christian Mission in Lakeland, Florida, in 1967.

12. And they began to listen to the life stories of the women they sought to serve. And, oh, the stories they heard. Stories of refugee women, women’s health needs, child labor, the needs of the girl child internationally and more. Stories that expanded their concepts of mission once again. Stories that made it clear that advocating for justice a part of the call to mission with women, children and youth.

13. And we worked with our sisters in mission through programs like Bible Women and Regional Missionaries.

14. And we continue to serve today. Nearly 150 years later.

15. The Legacy Fund
A forward-looking permanent endowment to undergird the work of future generations of United Methodist Women.

16. The Legacy Fund
Income will ensure a regular source of support for the core expenses of being in mission.

17. The Legacy Fund
Provides for the administration of United Methodist Women's:
Grants
Scholarships
Mission personnel

18. Membership nurture
Leadership development
Technological updates of data and communications operating systems

19. By Phone:
Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.–6 p.m.

20. Online at:

21. By Mail: Make checks payable to
United Methodist Women,
Treasurer’s Office 475 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10115

22. By Mobile Phone
Text Legacy150 to 41444