Our congregation has a long-term commitment to social justice work. Our role models include former minister Waitstill Sharp and his wife, Martha. In February 1939, soon after Czechoslovakia fell to the Nazis, the Sharps traveled to Prague, leaving their children in the care of UU Wellesley congregation members. The Sharps facilitated the escape of children, intellectuals, and anti-Nazi leaders from Czechoslovakia and other European countries. Their pioneering efforts led to the formation of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which works for human rights and democracy around the world to this day. The Sharps were posthumously awarded the designation “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel in December 2005.