1987 REPORT OF THE
SPECIAL PROJECTS COMMITTEE TO THE
GENERAL COUNCIL OF URANTIA BROTHERHOOD
Marilynn Kulieke


Over the past year, Special Projects Committee has met twice - on December 6, 1986 and May 17, 1987. The topics that we have been working on this year include: a proposal based on the history resolution, the Resource Guide for Secondary Works, a proposal to establish topical/working/interest groups, and computer usages within URANTIA Brotherhood.

At the October meeting of the Special Projects Committee we developed Spec. Sheets for two activities related to the history resolution which was passed by the General Council in 1985 and reconfirmed at the 1986 meeting of the General Council. These two Spec. Sheets dealt with the development of an indexed record of decisions for URANTIA Brotherhood and developing "historicity" procedures, or standard operating procedures for filing and retrieval. Based on the response from the Executive committee we developed a full proposal for compiling a Brotherhood Index of Decisions and Activities. The Index of Decisions is a document which would abstract past decisions of the General Council and Executive Committee as well as activities undertaken by these groups. This index would be computerized, would provide access to decisions that were made on various topics and could be used as a method to classify future decisions. The full proposal developed by Special Projects Committee was sent to the Executive Committee for their review at the June, 1987 meeting. No action on this proposal has been taken at this time.

The development of The Resource Guide for Secondary works has not proceeded over the past year because the Executive Committee has been working on a draft of a policy statement related to secondary works. We plan to implement the project in September, 1987 after we have further input from the Executive Committee and General Council.

At the June,1986 meeting of the Special Projects Committee a proposal dealing with the concept of special interest groups supported by URANTIA Brotherhood was introduced. Our committee revised and submitted this proposal entitled "The Formation of TWIGS (Topical/Working/Interest Groups)" to the Executive Committee in February, 1987. This proposal provides a structure for individuals throughout the movement to become more involved with URANTIA Brotherhood by allowing for a network of groups to be formed that would deal with: the study and exchange of ideas (topical), service to URANTIA Brotherhood Organization (working) and reversion and fellowship (interests). These groups would be patterned after the SIGs (special. interest groups) sponsored by MENSA. The Executive Committee has not given us feedback on this proposal. as of the writing of this report. 0 Our committee is also discussing computer uses within URANTIA Brotherhood. We decided to generate a "wish list" of ideas that URANTIA Brotherhood might pursue with regards to the computer. Once we have completed this list we will circulate it to get feedback on the ideas people think are most important. We then may choose to develop one or more of these ideas into full proposals. We plan to have our wish list compiled by late fall next year.

I want to personally acknowledge the work and cooperative spirit that members of the Special Projects Committee has exhibited over the past year. The fact that our committee has been able to generate several projects over the year is in large part due to the efforts and commitment of several committee members. Officially I'd like to thank Cece Forrester, Daniel Glazer, Bill Hazen, Neal Kendall, Jim McNelly, Bob Bruyn (adjunct) and Don Guimond (adjunct).