Room at the Inn

Room at the Inn (RATI) is a year-round program sponsored by the Sisters of Divine Providence. The program, which involves more than 60 churches in the St. Louis area, provides shelter for up to 20 persons per week. Most of the guests are single women and women with children, who stay with RATI for a maximum of four weeks. 

During the day, the shelter in Bridgeton, Missouri, helps adults find work and housing and provides daycare for young children, transportation to school for older children, and personal counseling. Each evening, the guests are divided between two of the churches, which provide an evening meal and sleeping quarters.

Eliot has been participating in this program since 1992. Every Thursday, except the fourth Thursday of the month, Eliot drivers pick up our guests at the shelter and bring them to Eliot where our cooks serve a delicious home-cooked meal.  Two Eliot hosts arrive at 5:30 pm, enjoy a meal provided by other Eliot volunteers, and help the guests get settled in downstairs classrooms. Hosts spend the night in a separate classroom. Friday morning, hosts wake the guests, provide a light breakfast, and clean up. Drivers return the guests to the shelter and hosts return home by about 7:00 am. Our launderers pick up the sheets and towels, launder them, and return them to Eliot by the next Thursday.

For more information or to volunteer, please contact  Joanne Prats or Karen Gender at  RATI@eliotchapel.org

Fair Trade

The Fair Trade team sells chocolate, shade-grown organic coffee, and other fairly traded products in accordance with Eliot Chapel’s mission to act for social justice. Volunteers staff the sales cart on Sundays in Adams Hall following both services.  Fair Trade will be donating a portion of its profits to a to-be-identified cause in a coffee producing country this year.

For more information or to volunteer, contact fairtrade@eliotchapel.org.

Get Involved

If you would like to get involved in any of Eliot's Social Action opportunities, please contact socialjustice@eliotchapel.org.

SJA Update - May 2017

As part of its mission, Eliot Chapel works to create a just world through vibrant, beloved community.  One way we do this is through the Social Justice in Action (SJA) program. 

In recent months, SJA has seen an upsurge of interest in activism among Eliot’s members and friends. New participants are attending SJA meetings and joining teams focused on improving education equity, supporting constitutional policing practices, protecting the environment, and defending our system of democracy and government. Teams of Eliot members and friends are digging into the urgent issues of the day and finding ways to make a difference – together.   Eliot Chapel’s SJA program is being acknowledged in our community as a social justice leader.

If you would like to learn more about current SJA projects, click here or stop by the Sunday table in Adams Hall.

To get involved, contact a member of the SJA Steering Committee - Peter Wilson, Steve Mennerick, Terry Jones, Faith Williams, Allison Hibbs and Beth Griffin - by emailing us at socialjustice@eliotchapel.org or sign up on the bulletin board or at the SJA table in Adams Hall on Sundays. 

2016-17 PLAN

Your Social Justice in Action Team is planning a great year, and offering exciting opportunities for everyone to get involved. 

• We are deepening our commitment to racial justice with new all reads and small group action circles.
• In this election year voting is a sacred right, and we are doing a lot to ensure that everyone has it. Click here to help defeat Constitutional Amendment 6 that mandates photo ID for Missouri voters, or to help us get out the vote. 
• Eliot volunteers are helping make our community a welcoming new home for the many refugees pouring into St. Louis. Click here for how you can help.
• We are forming partnerships with Kirkwood parents and others working to close the achievement gap for black students in the Kirkwood School District. Click here to learn more and join up.
• We are continuing our work with the Kirkwood Police Department and Human Rights Commission on recommendations put forth by the Ferguson Commission.  Click here to join the team.

For a full description of the Social Justice in Action 2016-17 Plan, click here. 

All of us of Eliot are called to community and to be the change we wish to see in the world.  We invite you to join us in the challenge to fulfill Dr. ML King’s vision of Beloved Community. 

Why We Still Stand in Weekly Vigil
Since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson early August of 2014, members of Eliot Unitarian Chapel and people from the greater community have stood in a weekly Vigil for Hope and Healing.  Why do we still stand in vigil?  Has so little changed? Frankly, yes. Despite our important conversations and efforts these past many months, little has changed to deconstruct the systemic racism that grips our metropolitan area.

We stand in quiet vigil to publicly witness our opposition to the racism and hate that is still so entrenched in our region. We stand in hope that continued work, from each of us, can help heal us all from this disease of racism. 

Most of our communities, in different forms and to different degrees, sustain systems of inequality that demonstrate black lives do not matter: unequal education; limited access to health care; declining public health rankings; housing laws that concentrate poverty; low-wage employment and widening economic inequality; inadequate public transportation and the public refusal to adequately fund the services for these sectors in order to eliminate structural racism in our society. These systems of inequality quietly protect white people, including most of us at Eliot Chapel, and shelter us from understanding that this oppression hurts our neighbors of color and, ultimately, diminishes our own humanity.

Can any caring white person find this acceptable?

We strive for a just society ordered by law, not chaos, and law enforcement has a vital, and difficult role serving this goal. However, as people of faith who profess that every person has inherent worth and dignity, we stand in opposition to the historic oppression of black people, including the role of law enforcement in this oppression. Decreasing racial profiling of entire communities and of individuals, as well as de-escalating the use of deadly force, would be two immediate steps law enforcement could take to rebuild trust and save lives, including the lives of police officers often harmed by escalating violence. De-escalating violence by all would help us build more loving communities.

Those of us who are white have largely ignored our role perpetuating racism. In America, our status as the dominant culture declares that our white lives matter. We need no signage. And no one else who is NOT in the dominant culture, who is not white, ever forgets that our white lives matter. How loudly, how publicly, and how personally will each of US proclaim that THEIR black, brown, red and yellow lives matter?

In his summons to Selma fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called out to us:  “We have witnessed an eruption of the disease of racism which seeks to destroy all America. It is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden,” This disease of racism still infects us today.

 So we still stand in quiet vigil. We proclaim Black Lives Matter. We stand with all the people of Greater Ferguson and St. Louis. Together we strive to build a just and loving community for all.  Come.  Stand by our side.  Stand on the Side of Love.

Social Justice in Action Team
Eliot Unitarian Chapel
Kirkwood, Missouri
[Recommended reading online:  www.forwardthroughferguson.org]

Vigils are held every Tuesday evening at 6:00 pm on Eliot's front lawn.