Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

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Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
Formation	May 1940
Type	non-profit human rights organization
Website	http://wwwu.usc.org/

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) is a non-profit, nonsectarian associate member organization of the Unitarian Universalist Association that works to provide disaster relief and promote social justice around the world.

The UUSC was started in May 1940 as the Unitarian Service Committee by Waitstill Sharp, a minister of the Unitarian Church in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and his wife Martha. Its initial mission was to coordinate the rescue of European Jews and anti-Nazi political leaders from war-torn Europe. The Sharps opened an office in Lisbon, Portugal on June 20, 1940, to arrange for safe passage for those fleeing the Nazi war machine.^[1]

The organization’s first board of directors was chaired by William Emerson, dean of the School of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other board members included Harold Burton, mayor of Cleveland, Ohio and a future associate justice of the Supreme Court; Percival Brundage, senior partner in the Price Waterhouse and future budget director for President Dwight D. Eisenhower; Louise Wright, chairwoman of the voters department of government and foreign policy for the League of Women Voters.^[2]

Today, the UUSC is active in coordinating relief efforts around the world and investigating reports of human rights abuses. Its recent activities have focused on the conflict in Darfur and organizing volunteers to help survivors of the Gulf Coast hurricanes.^[3] The organization is also active in lobbying corporations engaged in business with governments that it has identified as abusing basic human rights.^[4]