December Beyond Belief Network Roundup!
By GO HumanityWe just finished rounding up reports of what teams in our volunteer network did for their communities in December… plus their annual stats!
We’re still receiving reports, but here’s what we know so far about volunteers’ impact in 2021:
- Volunteer hours given: 11, 723.7
- Total events held: 516
- Individual beneficiaries served: 49,348
- Meals served: 20, 909
In December, this consisted of…
- 1,568 volunteer hours
- 49 total events
- 13,202 individual beneficiaries served
Of this, teams in our Food Security Project contributed…
- 1,097 volunteer hours
- 37 total events
- 12,792 individual beneficiaries served
- 2,556 meals served
- 1,855 pounds of food harvested
- 23,856 pounds of food distributed
Here’s how that broke down by team in December:
Southeastern Virginia Atheists, Skeptics, & Humanists (SEVASH)
December’s Team of the Month built and maintains two free food pantries in partnership with other local orgs.
Ten known volunteers contributed approximately 378 pounds to the pantries of at a cost of about $347. With funds from FBB, they were better able to reimburse their contributors, and to increase the amount of food available—even despite being a few volunteers short.
Central Florida Freethought Community (CFFC)
This team volunteered in the kitchen and warehouse at social service provider UP Orlando.
For their holiday celebration, they collected 157 toys and books (mostly educational STEAM toys) for their local Boys and Girls Club–plus $400 in financial gifts that helped with additional purchases!
As if that wasn’t enough, they also found time to clean up a six-acre park!
Northwest Chicagoland Humanist Crew (NCHC)
NCHC volunteers collected essentials like pantry items and undergarments for WINGS, a charity that provides housing, integrated services, education, and advocacy to end domestic violence!
Humanist Society Greater Phoenix (HSGP)
This Arizona Food Security Project team continued their partnership with Project Roots, a nonprofit that educates the community about growing their own food and supports unhoused people from community gardens. They made soup to feed 100 people (with ingredients contributed by HSGP) and helped Project Roots troubleshoot some difficulties they’d been having with food storage. HSGP even made some donations to help them buy storage containers, hot boxes, and aprons!
Austin Atheists Helping the Homeless (AHH)
This Food Security Project team holds a big monthly food distribution to unsheltered people. Thanks to the holiday spirit, they were able to give out $4,125 in monthly bus passes, and a huge amount of shoes, clothes, and warmth items. Volunteers packed and gave out 162 bags of total aid in three locations, including one they recently discovered deeper in the park words where people are taking refuge from the city’s camping ban.
Humanist Alliance Philippines International (HAPI)
This highly active Food Security Project team had a big list of events last month:
- A Year End Party in Alabang, where HAPI’s chapter there entertained and fed 130 excited kids!
- Maintaining a Garden of Hope in Zambales which feeds, supports, and gives respite to people living with HIV at a nearby shelter! (20 recipients can plant, harvest, and sell the vegetables for income.)
- A bread giving event in Zambales, where volunteers baked 1,000 pieces of fresh bread and brought it (plus 50 lbs of vegetables) as a gift for hospital patients and staff
- A typhoon relief operation in Cagayan de Oro City, where HAPI collected and distributed donations of essentials to 30 families and 50 children.
- A tree planting where volunteers sowed 50 guyabano (soursop) seedlings, plus scattered mulch to protect roadside soil from pests!
Humanists of Tallahassee (HOT)
This Food Security Project team met three times for a snack/hygiene pack distribution they run with a progressive church. Volunteers gave unsheltered people granola bars, water, applesauce, pudding, peanut butter crackers, Vienna sausages, washcloths, soap, shampoo, deodorant, razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, period products, and socks!
They also met for a special holiday giveaway where they assembled festively-decorated bags containing snacks, fruit, treats, and handwarmers—plus notes of encouragement. They gave out bags at a couple sites across town as well as at a Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day event.
Atheists United (AU)
This Los Angeles Food Security Project team had a few logs in the fire in December:
- Making homemade lunches for people experiencing homeless and delivering them to a shelter.
- Running their big monthly food distribution, sorting groceries into 108 food kits given out to families in Historic Filipinotown.
- Raising $1,000 for Bridge to Home Soup for the Soul in Santa Clarita, CA!
Central Ohio United Nontheists (COUNT)
This Columbus, OH team prepped food and cleaned at the Van Buren Center shelter. Volunteers have contributed 1,261 hours at 83 events there to date!
North Orlando Oasis
This Food Security Project team delivered boxes of food from an organic farm to a shelter and worked at UP Orlando’s grocery center.
They also performed invasive plant removal and aquarium cleaning at Oakland Nature Preserve, source of the above Picture of the Month!
Atheist Community of Polk County (ACPC)
This highly active Food Security Project team…
- Met three times for their Street Warriors giveaway program feeding unhoused people in Winter Haven, FL
- Met twice for Weekends Without Hunger, where volunteers stuff bags with food supplies for food insecure elementary school students
- Met twice to clean up their 2.2 mile stretch of the Old Dixie Highway in Auburndale
Kenya Humanist Alliance
Thanks to FBB donors, this Food Security Project team in east Africa did a big bunch of events, including…
- Providing farm-fresh cabbages, carrots, onions, and potatoes to struggling widows in in Kisumu County.
- Blending and distributing fresh fruit juice for malnourished people, including hospital patients and kids
- Running a weekend feeding program for orphans
- Packing fruit pudding for impoverished people
- A food distribution in the Manyatta Slums of Kisumu
- Harvesting 30 kg of cassava for needy families in the Muhoroni settlement scheme, where farmers have been impacted by a prolonged drought
Food Rescue Alliance teams
Four affiliates of our major grantee Food Rescue Alliance are among the volunteer teams receiving grants in the Food Security Project. Here’s what they’ve been up to:
360 Eats
Volunteers from this group collaborated with a local pantry to pack and serve nutritious, ready-to-eat meals for the food insecure community in Safety Harbor, FL. They met up four times for this project in December, making about 100 meals for 100 families each time.
CAFÉ Food Rescue
This team in Summit County, CO kept up with their regular collections of food at a local Starbucks, which is made available in coolers at a community care clinic. They also sent some food to a church for a community dinner and to a women’s shelter. They estimate about 700 pounds of food waste was donated and distributed—5,000 pounds since they started earlier last year!
This team is looking to expand, and has been busy working on their website, recruiting board members, and finding a lawyer/CPA to help them start up as a full-fledged nonprofit.
A professor of sustainability at Colorado Mountain College also said she is going to use CAFÉ Food Rescue as an instructional tool for her classes! Organizers will be meeting with some of the classes and helping discuss the science behind food waste and its climate impacts.
The Food Rescue
This team reported that they ended 2021 with a rescue food total of 190,000 pounds, translating to 103,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions prevented! For December, they distributed 19,000 pounds of food in 8 communities, including distributions on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day. Special holiday deliveries included taking fresh goodies from bakeries to a pantry and motel shelter, and a record 1,200 pound food rescue from a single grocery store to Bread of Life ministry in Malden. They also helped stock a community warming center with meat, produce, and bread when they opened for the season on December 1.
CORMII Community Development Corporation
All month, CORMII maintained their food pantry and held a weekly curbside food distribution. In December, they packed and distributed 649 meals. (59 of which were provided thanks to the grant from the Food Security Project.)
Way to close out the year with a bang, teams!
Sponsor one of these hard-working teams by setting up a recurring donation of $100 per month.