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By Elizabeth Dorssom

Foundation Beyond Belief’s Beyond Belief Network is a network of secular humanist groups interested in volunteering (Volunteers Beyond Belief) and raising money for FBB and our beneficiaries (Foundation Partners Program). Fall is here, and our volunteer groups are sending summer out with a blast and displaying humanity at work.

Flagstaff Freethinkers volunteered at the Flagstaff Family Food Center, a secular food pantry. They helped with food preparation, serving, and clean-up.

Humanists of Rhode Island volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to help build homes for the needy. The Humanists of Rhode Island have volunteered for Habitat for Humanity for more than two years and have been able to frame, shingle, paint, detail, insulate, and landscape houses. The Humanists of Rhode Island also attended a peace rally in which they collected money for Foundation Beyond Belief beneficiary International Rescue Committee to support Syrian refugee relief.

Fellowship of Freethought Dallas created a pasta bar for youth and volunteers at Youth First Texas. Previously, the group created a taco bar and prepared a Cajun meal for the youth. Youth First Texas provides a safe space for LGBTQ youth and their allied friends. Every Friday night they have a family-style meal that, for many, is the only nourishing meal they get during the week.

The Humanist Community of Ventura County became the first community group to ever volunteer in the California Lutheran University (CLU) Community Garden. They pulled weeds, watered plants, and picked ripe vegetables. The CLU Community Garden provides direct opportunities for students to learn about CLU’s sustainability principles and to participate in the nationwide movement of growing and purchasing local produce.

This summer, Central Ohio United Non-Theists (COUNT) volunteered as house-warmers for their local Ronald McDonald House (RMH). As house-warmers, COUNT worked with RMH guests to provide a home-like environment by greeting families, assisting with family needs, answering phones, giving tours, assisting with check-in and check-out, and preparing guest rooms after check-out. COUNT volunteers also assisted with cleaning facilities, laundry, restocking supplies, and staffing the front desk.

Are you a member of a secular humanist group and want to help your community, raise awareness of nonbelievers doing good deeds, and connect with other service-oriented groups? Ask your team to join Beyond Belief Network. BBN staff can help you achieve your service goals and, as you submit event reports, your team will qualify for free t-shirts and the opportunity to apply for grants.

By Sarah Henry

The third quarter of 2013 is drawing swiftly to a close, and it’s your last chance to distribute your donations among our five beneficiaries.

Here’s a quick look at what our amazing beneficiaries have been up to this quarter:

Hesperian Health Guides, our Poverty and Health beneficiary, started as a humble organization publishing one manual on basic home health care. Now, Hesperian provides an online bookstore, resources in more than 80 languages, digital diagnosis tools, illustrations, and downloadable health guides. Hesperian also runs a book donation service called “Gratis Books,” which gives free resource libraries to communities in need. With its twenty current publications, Hesperian Health Guides is working to make sure that every person, regardless of doctor availability, is diagnosed accurately and treated appropriately.

The Human Rights beneficiary for Q3, Cure Violence, treats community violence as a disease, promoting prevention, diagnoses, and curative steps. More specifically, Cure Violence has three steps to dealing with an “infection” of violence: detecting and interrupting potential infectious events, determining who are most likely to cause another infectious event, and reducing their likelihood of developing and subsequently transmitting the infection, changing the underlying social and behavioral norms, or environmental conditions, that directly relate to this infection. Cure Violence’s program has been proven to eliminate or reduce violence in Chicago, New York, and Baltimore, and the program works effectively across the United States.

Our Natural World beneficiary this quarter is EcoHealth Alliance. (We featured this organization, formerly Wildlife Trust, in the first quarter of 2010.) EcoHealth Alliance works across the United States and in 20 other countries in Central and South America. In America, EcoHealth Alliance works with the federal government to promote science in the classrooms and science-guided legislature proposals. EcoHealth Alliance has a multitude of projects focused on promoting greater ecological health and biodiversity. Bat Conservation and Health focuses on communicable diseases in bat communities, and how to prevent them. The Sicki Project supports peer review efforts and facilitates scientific collaboration in an attempt to discover the origins of emerging infectious diseases, while other projects focus on ending the illegal wildlife trade. EcoHealth Alliance supports conservationists in order to save endangered species and their habitats, and strives to protect delicate ecosystems for the benefit of both wildlife and humans.

Women’s Global Education Project, our Q3 Education beneficiary, primarily focuses on promoting education for women and girls in Senegal and Kenya. WGEP was founded in 2003 as a Senegalian project. They now work in Senegal and Kenya to provide scholarship support, tutoring, mentoring, and, their most central project, education about alternatives to female genital mutilation (FGM) as a rite of passage for girls. WGEP provides classes for families on girls’ health and rights, as well as offering an educational program, Circumcisions with Words, for teenage girls and their mothers, at which they attend workshops about women’s rights and female empowerment. WGEP is focused on developing female-friendly communities in Senegal and Kenya.

The Challenge the Gap beneficiary position was filled this quarter by American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker nonprofit developing a variety of programs focused on peace. AFSC wants to eliminate nuclear weapons, shape and facilitate a just federal budget, and provide peaceful alternative social programs for potentially violent youth. AFSC also has a large project dedicated to prison-system reform, a consistent focus of Quaker social programming. Right now, AFSC works across the United States and in 14 other nations, including North Korea, Israel, and Haiti. AFSC works to provide lasting peace with justice, a goal that Quakers see as a practical extension of faith.

Click here to learn more about this quarter’s outstanding beneficiaries.

This month, we’ve been updating you on the progress of Seráh Blain’s campaign to raise awareness of the homelessness epidemic in Arizona. Seráh struggled through physical injuries, battled depression and sheer exhaustion, and developed a supportive street community. Her goal was to raise $2 for every homeless person in Arizona last year, but the project was unfortunately cut short due to ongoing health issues. We are awarding Seráh and her project a $500 Small Grant. Her project is inspiring and eye-opening to the realities of chronic homelessness — you can read more or donate at her website.

All quarter, our Pathfinders have been pouring their lives into working with nonprofits, schools, and businesses for their secular humanist service trip. Pathfinders Project has three main goals:

• Complete clean water, education, and sustainability projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
• Engage in dialogue across religious, cultural, and ethnic boundaries
• Assess countries and partner organizations with the ultimate goal of selecting a site for launching the Humanist Action: Ghana, a future program of Foundation Beyond Belief

The Pathfinders kicked off their year of service in Los Angeles, CA, working with the Westside Food Bank, TreePeople, and Heal the Bay. In August, the Pathfinders moved on to Cambodia, their first international mission. They taught English and built floating latrines and water movement systems at Bridge of Life School. Now, our Pathfinders are working in Uganda, where they will remain until mid-November. Conor, Ben, Michelle, and Wendy are working hard to provide much-needed services to children and adults who may not have gotten these benefits another way. Follow their adventures in humanism, service, and international relations on their website.

Earlier this month, FBB launched a new crisis response drive to support those affected by the violent conflict in Syria. International Rescue Committee is the beneficiary of this fund drive. While much of the world’s attention is focused on the political and diplomatic aspects of the Syrian civil war, the most pressing issue that must be addressed is the massive refugee crisis. More than 6 million Syrians have been displaced, and relief organizations have received less than half of the funding necessary to meet their basic needs. The IRC is working to provide food, water, and shelter to refugees in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. Setting the IRC apart from other crisis response nonprofits is its dedication to eliminating the gender-based violence that often accompanies war and displaced populations. So far, we’ve raised more than $8,800 to support the IRC’s work. Click here to donate to our crisis response campaign.

In July, Foundation Beyond Belief hit a major milestone: Our members and community have now raised more than 1 million dollars for secular and humanist organizations. Thank you so much for coming together and proving that the humanist community is compassionate and actively engaged in improving this life for all people. With continued, generous member and donor support, we’ve reached old goals and set new ones. Thanks again for your support as we promote humanist compassion and generosity.

Don’t forget to sign in to your account and allocate your donations for the third quarter (on the right side of the page, choose “Manage Donation”).

By Brittany Shoots-Reinhard

Our Heart of Humanism Award winner for Best Photo and Best Article were both submitted by Missi Adzima from Valley Skeptics in the Park. Her team has decided to award the two $50 grants they won to the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in memory of Missi’s grandmother. From her walk page: “Last year I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer’s. She was a special lady and it was awful to watch her go from someone so full of life to someone that didn’t even know who I was. I’m walking and raising money in her memory in hopes that there will be a day that nobody has to go through that.” Valley Skeptics’ grants will be donated to Missi’s walk page. With the FBB grant, she is only $100 away from her goal.

Rookie of the Year team Humanists of Rhode Island is using their $50 grant to help the more than 6 million refugees displaced by civil war in Syria. Not only that, but they’re working to raise additional funds for International Rescue Committee via Foundation Beyond Belief’s Humanist Crisis Response.

Most Valuable Volunteer Josh Nankivel is directing his $100 grant to the National Center for Science Education. NCSE was a Foundation Beyond Belief Humanist Giving Education beneficiary in 2010 and 2011. Josh explains “I’ve been a member of the NCSE and decided to give this grant to them because they do great work defending the integrity of science education. I believe the public understanding of science is the primary way to ensure human flourishing and the long term well-being of our planet. The children are our future, and they NEED a solid foundation in science education to be productive citizens and voters.”

Triangle Freethought Society, winner of the Humanism at Work Award for Most Volunteer Hours, is using their $250 grant for their extraordinarily active community service programs. Fellowship of Freethought Dallas won two awards: Feed the Need Award for Outstanding Food-Related Volunteering and the Eat. Sleep. Volunteer. Repeat. Award for Most Volunteer Events. They are using their $150 for their community outreach programs, which will no doubt include something food-related.

We are overwhelmed with the generosity shown by our Heart of Humanism Award winners.

By Stephanie Jackson-Ali, LMSW

This week I had the delight of speaking with Patricia Broughton, director of development for Cure Violence, our third-quarter Human Rights beneficiary. You’ve probably already learned the basics about Cure Violence. But, like Cure Violence and their interrupters, we wanted to go directly to the source for more details.

How did the basic idea for CV come about?

Cure Violence was founded by Dr. Gary Slutkin, who was an epidemiologist with training in how to treat infectious diseases. He began by working in San Francisco on the tuberculosis outbreak, then he worked in Africa with the World Health Organization on infectious diseases including malaria, cholera, and HIV/AIDS. He did that for about 10 years. When he returned in the early ‘90s, he really didn’t have plans for what he was going to do. He started hearing about this epidemic of violence. He looked at maps and graphs of violence and saw that it was behaving like other infectious diseases he had been preventing and stopping in Africa. He came up with the idea to apply the public health model to try to reduce violence. It was first tested in 2000 in the West Side of Chicago and we saw a 67% reduction in homicides and shootings in that first year. It has since been replicated in 18 communities in Chicago, seven cities outside Chicago or Illionis, and eight countries. So far the Chicago, Baltimore, and New York programs have all been independently tested.

Do you think this is a model that can work in any community, of any size? What about communities with different ethnic or cultural backgrounds?

[The model] has been piloted, tested, and evaluated with communities with the highest levels of violence. It is really designed for communities with a high concentration of violence. We’ve had questions from areas with no particular concentration and without a high enough scale of violence, but it isn’t designed for those communities. The model can be adapted for various cultures. We just had a staff member come back from Syrian refugee camps (in Jordan and Turkey) training them on the use of the model in those temporary communities. We believe it must be tested and evaluated, but the basic principles can be used in any situation with that high concentration of violence.

It seems you run predominately on a model of partnership and building a reusable model. How much oversight is there at locations outside of your main location in Chicago?

We continue to provide training and technical assistance. It is an ongoing partnership. We require continual data from partners so they can monitor and adapt as needed and we can see the effectiveness of the model. That includes both people coming to Chicago and onsite locations [training].

What must someone do to become a CV partner?

Once we’ve determined it could be effective, we have a number of requirements – the first is fidelity to the model. They must be working in the area with the greatest concentration of violence. They must be working with the right population (targeting highest risk individuals) – like gang members, [those who have] a gun or access to guns, and ex offenders. So they must be in the right place, with the right people, and the right staff. For our staff we use credible messengers – members of community who have the connections necessary.
We do also ask organizations to have funding in place – multi-year funding. We also want an independent evaluator in place before. Right now we have more evaluations coming from Puerto Rico and a program in a juvenile prison in London (this one they want to expand to other prisons in London). We want an evaluator in place so we can judge impact and effectiveness.

What do you think is the single greatest thing an individual can do to stem violence in their community or school?

There’s really four things a person can do:

1. Engage in practices that allow them to regulate their own emotions so they can deal with conflict in a nonviolent way—being mindful of one’s own capacity for violence and mitigating that.
    
2. [Have a] willingness to model nonviolence and intervene when violence is happening (for example, say to a friend getting riled up that there is a better alternative). We want it to be just as acceptable to say “don’t pull out your gun” as it is to say “you’re too drunk, give me your keys”—as long as it is early enough in the process.
    
3. Do what you can to change a culture that promotes violence as accepted—speak out to say there are other ways to solve problems nonviolently. Think of the Antionette Tuff incident. The NRA has a slogan: “The only thing that can stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.” That is putting you in harm, but with the power of persuasion, compassion can stop terrible violence.
    
4. Speak to legislators and policy makers and encourage them to use a public health approach to deal with violence. Not all resources should go to police, prisons, incarceration, and punishment. Get them to believe that violence is learned/acquired and can be unlearned—can be changed. Encourage policies and practices on a government level that go to a health approach rather than criminal justice approach.

Some people may have heard about CV, or at least the model, through The Interrupters. How did that film help promote the work of CV? Did it give the public any false ideas about the work you do?

That gave us a huge national audience when it aired on Frontline, and we continue to get donors from people seeing it—it was very helpful in that regard. It misrepresented, somewhat, what interrupters do. It shows a lot of work in the school—that is not the work they do—the long-time work in the schools, that isn’t the population they work with. It is more the work outreach workers do than what violence interrupters do. So, it was less about interrupters. What it also didn’t do very well: talk about the system that is in place, and interrupters are part of a system—people take just that piece. They are the point of a pyramid. Without outreach workers and without community programs to change the norms and thinking about what is accepted/expected, it isn’t effective—it didn’t show the whole system.

What do you consider your greatest success?

Our biggest success is in the leadership—that it has played in beginning to change the thinking about how to approach the problem. If you Google “public health approach to nonviolence” you get 5 million hits. The idea that you don’t need arrest/incarceration is revolutionary. We’ve had a limited impact in a handful of communities (although very strategic in some of the most dangerous), and we haven’t been able to scale the program in the way we’d like to, but we’re seeing more acceptance and advocacy to this approach.

How can someone support your work, aside from donations?

We don’t have the best advocacy—we need to develop and will be developing a more targeted campaign. We’re trying to put someone in our DC office who will be working on a policy level—it is a high funding priority. People can get connected to us (through our e-newsletter) so they can stay up to date with the work we’re doing. Advocate for this kind of work with your legislator. That is hard without a letter or organized campaign, but [start] encouraging alternatives to the criminal justice approach. The way to do this is to be a part of constituency on an ongoing basis.

*Note: to sign up for their e-newsletter, go to their home page and find the link in the bottom right corner.

[UPDATED 9/11/13 to reflect that Cure Violence programs have been independently evaluated in Chicago, Baltimore, and New York.]

By Walker Bristol

Merging activism for peace and social justice with a statement of religious-inspired values demonstrates how bridges can be built between secular humanists and religious communities—the “gaps” that can be “challenged.” Friends for a Non-Violent World (FNVW), our current Challenge the Gap beneficiary, draws inspiration from the Quaker lifestyle to engage in direct action and support efforts for a more peaceful world.

The Russian Art Museum, which serves as a “symbolic consulate” on U.S. shores to the Russian government, was the site of an FNVW demonstration demanding that the Russian government stop selling weapons to the Syrian government, currently in the midst of a horrific civil war. You can get involved, too: a petition is being formed to inspire the Russian embassy to persuade its government to reconsider propagating the violence in Syria. From FNVW: “Please click here and fill in the blanks to sign the petition. Please note that the web tool we are using looks like you are signing up for an event. Unfortunately, at this time, this is the only tool we have in place to use to gather electronic signatures for the petition.”

Most recently, the organization received a $7,000 grant from the Minnesota Historical Society to produce a series of one-hour documentary videos telling the stories of ten peace and justice activists in Minnesota. Such a campaign will certainly draw further attention to the work that groups like FNVW are doing to build a better world. You can keep up with their progress on the FNVW website.

And for those in the Minneapolis area, FNVW will be hosting a Holiday Fair December 8 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. You can sign up to donate food or volunteer by visiting their VolunteerSpot page.

The FBB Challenge the Gap initiative highlights how, in our complex and interconnected world, building coalitions based in shared goals with those who hold differing worldviews can bring real, inspiring change. And Friends for a Non-Violent World is our ally in the humanist service to peace.