Search results for: igwe

Our second-quarter 2013 slate of beneficiaries clearly resonated with the FBB community–last quarter, member donations broke records and resulted in some of our biggest-ever grants. For the first time, donations to our Humanist Giving program funded individual grants of more than $10,000 (for One Acre Fund and the Innocence Project of Texas). Compare that to our very first round of Humanist Giving in Q1 2010, when the largest grant was $1,640.

Q2 2013 also saw our largest Humanist Crisis Response drive: Members and supporters raised more than $45,000 in the aftermath of the devastating Oklahoma tornadoes. Those donations were sent directly to Operation USA and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, where they made an immediate difference on the ground and in the lives of those affected by the storms.

And for the first time, donations to and through Foundation Beyond Belief exceeded $100,000 in a single quarter. Here’s a breakdown of all donations for Q2 2013:

	Poverty & Health: One Acre Fund	$10,155
	Human Rights Encore: Innocence Project of Texas	$10,140
	Education: Bernie’s Book Bank	$9,250
	The Natural World: Trees, Water & People	$8,725
	Challenge the Gap: T’ruah	$7,775
	Foundation Beyond Belief	$5,250
	Small Grants: Pathfinders Project	$2,500
	Small Grants: Igwe Project	$1,010
	Humanist Crisis Response: Operation USA	$22,660
	Humanist Crisis Response: Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma	$22,660
	Q2 TOTAL	$100,125

 Many thanks to our members and supporters–YOU make this possible! Don’t forget to learn about our current slate of beneficiaries for Q3 2013. And if you aren’t a member yet, there’s no better time to join!  

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July brings the introduction of our new third-quarter beneficiaries, a fantastic collection of organizations working to fight violence, spread important health information, support gender equality, promote social justice, and protect biodiversity. We’re excited to support the work of these groups over the next three months. If you’re a member, don’t forget to log in and distribute your donations.

Human Rights: Cure Violence

Cure Violence is an anti-violence organization that treats violence like a disease that needs to be stopped at its root. Their approach to violence prevention rests on three pillars of treating infectious epidemics—detecting and interrupting potential infectious events; determining who is most likely to cause another infectious event; and finally changing the social conditions that allow violence to spread. To these ends, Cure Violence deploys staff called Violence Interrupters. Violence Interrupters are trained to find potentially lethal ongoing conflicts and use conflict mediation techniques to prevent violence. Interrupters are hired to work in the communities they are from, and where they are known by high-risk individuals. A key component of Cure Violence’s strategy is to develop a rapport with individuals in the community who are at highest risk of becoming the victim or perpetrator of violence. This model program is being replicated in other communities.

Poverty & Health: Hesperian Health Guides

Hesperian Health Guides creates and distributes educational materials to communities without access to vital health information or medical care infrastructure. Hesperian has distributed health information in 80 different languages to communities in 221 countries and territories over the past 40 years. Local health care workers, educators, Peace Corps volunteers, and community organizers use health guides to better serve communities without access to traditional care. Hesperian books have been distributed for decades, helping millions of individuals in communities from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

In a world where electronic media is rapidly changing, Hesperian is now reaching into phone apps and Kindle readers, supplying digital materials to communities that are beginning to access electronic communication but still want the trustworthy material they have come to rely upon.

Education: Women’s Global Education Project

Women’s Global Education Project (WGEP) is a ten-year-old organization founded on the belief that a society thrives when there is universal education, gender equity, and women who are empowered to be independent. WGEP partners with local organizations in Senegal and Kenya to improve the educational outcomes of young women.

Women’s Global Education Project has provided more than 1,600 scholarships to more than 600 girls to further their education in Kenya and Senegal. They have also invested in communities providing adult education, boys’ and girls’ clubs, health education, and an alternative ceremony to female genital mutilation.

Challenge the Gap: American Friends Service Committee

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is our Challenge the Gap beneficiary for Q3. (Learn more about our Challenge the Gap program here.) AFSC is a Quaker organization that works on a diverse set of issues, usually related to social justice and peace. Founded during World War I, in their 90 years of service they’ve worked to promote peace in difficult situations. They received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1947 for their work. Their activities include combating HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe, responding to disasters in Myanmar, peace building in war-torn countries such as Somalia, and bringing communities together with police to combat crime in Mexico. AFSC has a broad reach and maintains a presence all over the world.

Natural World Encore: EcoHealth Alliance

EcoHealth Alliance is an international organization made up of scientists working to conserve the biodiversity in more than 20 nations around the globe. Their projects include preventing infectious disease pandemics, fighting the illegal wildlife trade, preserving endangered species, and conservation medicine. EcoHealth Alliance, working for more than four decades, has pioneered the field of conservation medicine, which links ecological disruption with human health and well-being.

EcoHealth Alliance’s work includes research into SARS, HIV/AIDS, ebola, bird flu, and the Nipah virus. To do their work, they partner with local organizations around the world.

EcoHealth Alliance was featured under the name Wildlife Trust in our debut quarter, Q1 2010. They received a grant of $1,145 from Foundation Beyond Belief at that time. We welcome them as our Encore beneficiary this quarter.

Small Grant: Humanist Action: Ghana/Pathfinder’s Project—Ghana

Ghana ranks 135 out of 186 on the United Nations Development Index. Pathfinders Project will volunteer with two organizations in Ghana: First, they will visit Accra, where they will work with the Alliance for African Women Initiative. AAWI has a strong presence in Accra serving woman in the areas of health, education, social rights, and empowerment.

The Pathfinders will also visit Leo Igwe’s refugee camps in northern rural Ghana, where women accused of witchcraft from across the region are seeking refuge, food, and shelter. This project has the support of the International Humanist Ethical Union, where Leo is employed. This project was previously featured as a small grant beneficiary in Q3 of 2012.

Small grants at Foundation Beyond Belief are funded in two ways. Members can choose to select a box in the donation allocation area that says “Small Grants or Greatest Needs,” and anyone can donate directly to a small grants project (both non-members and members giving an additional donation on top of their regular contribution). The Pathfinders Project still needs financial support to make their trip a success—you can donate to them here.

Because Pathfinders is sponsored by Foundation Beyond Belief, this small grant will cover the Pathfinders’ expenses while in Ghana, including housing and food (less than $10 per person/day), transportation, and donations to both the Alliance for African Women’s Initiative and the Igwe refugee camps.

Members, don’t forget to log in and distribute your donations for the third quarter of 2013. Not yet a member? Join today!

By Conor Robinson. Click here to lend your support to the Pathfinders Project fund drive.

When we announced the Pathfinders Project, we shared our excitement for its potential to demonstrate humanism at its best and serve as the launching pad for the Humanist Action: Ghana. We are also eager to build synergy among humanists and humanist groups and strengthen the connection Foundation Beyond Belief has developed since its inception.

At Foundation Beyond Belief, we engage in a thorough vetting process for selecting beneficiaries. Through this process we come to know and value the people of these organizations and their amazing work. When Foundation Beyond Belief selects an organization as a beneficiary, it marks the beginning of a relationship with that organization, not the end. Foundation Beyond Belief is proud that Pathfinders Project will strengthen its relationships with some of its beneficiary organizations even further, while exploring relationships with organizations that may very well become beneficiaries in the future.

For their first project, the Pathfinders will work with Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK), one of Foundation Beyond Belief’s inaugural beneficiaries from 2010. In addition to providing meals to all those who are hungry, TASK provides adult education services to encourage self-sufficiency, informs the wider community about the needs of the hungry, advocates for resources to meet these needs, and offers educational extracurricular activities for needy children on days when local schools are not in session.

The Pathfinders will be working with two former education beneficiaries when they get to Uganda, where there is a promising profusion of humanist schools. One such school is the Kasese Humanist Primary School, a beneficiary from 2012. Another is the Mustard Seed Secondary School, one of the institutions supported by the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust, a beneficiary from 2010 and an Encore Beneficiary in 2011. The Kasese Humanist Primary School and the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust develop lifelong learners who care for each other and for their communities. The schools encourage students to be open minded and questioning, to respect evidence, and to appreciate shared human values. We wish we saw more of this approach to education in the United States!

During part of their stay in Ghana, the Pathfinders will visit some of the witch camps where Leo Igwe is currently conducting his research. Leo Igwe’s field study into witchcraft accusations in Ghana is currently being supported by Foundation Beyond Belief in collaboration with the James Randi Educational Foundation and the Institute for Science and Human Values. Igwe is one of the most prominent and acclaimed humanists on the African continent, and his work raises awareness of the deplorable living situation for the many Ghanaian women who have been accused of witchcraft and expelled from their villages. The Pathfinders will help identify the needs of these women, needs that Foundation Beyond Belief is committed to helping address in the future.

During one of their months in Guatemala, the Pathfinders will work with Avivara, one of Foundation Beyond Belief’s 2012 small grant beneficiaries. Avivara is a small organization with a big impact—its multifaceted approach to improving educational access and outcomes for impoverished youth in Guatemala has yielded tangible results for many students, schools, and communities. 

With your help over the past three years, we have been hard at work putting our money where our mouth is in support of some incredible beneficiaries. Now, with your continued help, we will put our young humanist leaders to work furthering the exemplary efforts of our beneficiaries and the principles of humanism on the ground. If you’d like to contribute, please visit the Pathfinders Project fundraiser on IndieGoGo.

Pathfinders Project is a yearlong international service and research trip sponsored by Foundation Beyond Belief. From July 2013 to July 2014, four humanists will complete clean water, education, and human rights projects in collaboration with local nonprofits and NGOs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As they complete these projects, the Pathfinders will collect data on each country and partner organization with the ultimate goal of evaluating sites for the forthcoming Humanist Action: Ghana.

Pathfinders Project and the Humanist Action: Ghana will enable humanists to put their values into action, thereby demonstrating those values to the world. Pathfinders Project has been described by Hemant Mehta as “the ultimate service project for Humanists” and by James Croft as “a life-changing opportunity.” Certainly, Pathfinders Project will have a meaningful impact on each of the communities visited and a profound effect on each of the Pathfinders. Furthermore, Pathfinders Project will shape the humanist movement for years to come. In taking the first step toward launching the Humanist Action: Ghana, the Pathfinders are building the structure of a flagship program not just for Foundation Beyond Belief, but for the entire humanist movement.

Leo Igwe’s field study into witchcraft accusations in Ghana was a Foundation Beyond Belief small grant awardee and is now open for ongoing individual donations. Witchcraft accusations constitute a serious threat to human rights and individual safety in several regions of Africa, none more so than Northern Ghana. Click here to make a donation in support of this project.

By Leo Igwe

A 48-year-old woman, F., is currently languishing in a “witch camp” in Kukuo in Northern Ghana. If she is not relocated and rehabilitated soon, F., like other victims of witchcraft accusation, will spend the rest of her life in this remote village. She is the newest alleged “witch” to arrive in this community, which is one of the few places in Ghana that provides safe spaces to victims of witchcraft accusations. F. was accused of bewitching a girl, and she had to flee the community to escape being lynched by a local mob.

Most cases of witchcraft accusation take place in remote villages where local chiefs and elders, chief priests, and soothsayers wield a lot of influence. There is widespread poverty and lack of infrastructure. Witchcraft accusation is often a cover for many social problems, such as ignorance, envy, jealousy, struggle for scarce resources, sickness and disease, family disputes, rivalry, hatred, and gender injustice. Alleged witches are often made scapegoats, particularly in communities where any instance of misfortune is often believed to be caused by human beings through magical means.

F.’s husband died some years ago, and she relocated to live with her mother and to take care of her. But there she fell out with the family head, G. After a dispute with the family head and the village chief, G. accused F. of bewitching a child. The child was sick and claimed she saw F. in her dreams. This claim is locally associated with witchcraft—the person seen in a dream is believed to be a witch and the cause of the illness. F. agreed to go to a shrine for a witch testing to prove her innocence, but a local mob was threatening to kill her if she did not “release,” or heal, the child. A family member of F. living in a neighboring town sent a police team that rescued her and took her to another village. The “bewitched” girl was taken to a nearby hospital, where she received medical treatment. F. was taken to a nearby town for a few days before she was sent to Kukuo, where she is currently staying.

The police station that sent a team to rescue F. has no record of the incident. Officers at the station said that they were only interested in rescuing and conveying her to a safe location and not in bringing criminal charges against her accusers. This is apparently a common attitude among police throughout the Northern Region. There is lack of political will to tackle the problem head on. Hence the scourge of witch hunting continues to ravage many communities, and witch camps continue to proliferate in the region.  

Click here to make a donation in support of the Igwe Witchcraft Accusation field project. 

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2012 has been an exhilarating year, characterized by inspiration, heartbreak, and revolution. At Foundation Beyond Belief, we sought to navigate the year’s tragedies with our Crisis Response program, offering relief where it is most needed. We instigated a promising new partnership with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to educate the public and fund research in the fight against cancer through their Light the Night program. Our Volunteers Beyond Belief teams continued to support their local communities through important service endeavors. We continued our staple Humanist Giving program, facilitating the transfer of your donations to an outstanding charity slate working on many fronts to build a better world. Our dedicated community helped us secure a tremendous grant from the Chase Giving Foundation, which will enable us to expand our efforts.

Humanist Giving

This year, our members donated more than $203,000 to our beneficiaries, small grant recipients, and Foundation Beyond Belief through the Humanist Giving program. In its third year of existence, the program changed formats this year, now supporting five charities instead of 10 each quarter. By reducing the number of beneficiaries each quarter, we are able to make a larger impact to each of our grantees, streamline our own processes, and better tell the stories of our beneficiaries. Each quarter we offer support in the areas of Poverty and Health, Education, Human Rights, The Natural World, Challenge the Gap, and Small Grants.

Our Humanist Giving program is most of all about our 2012 grant recipients. They are inspiring and extraordinary. In Q1 2012, our Challenge the Gap program entered its second year, supporting the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which used our grant to support their gender equality work in the United States and Guatemala. Our Human Rights beneficiary in Q2 was the It Gets Better Project; find out how the project got started. Our Q2 Poverty and Health beneficiary Shoulder to Shoulder shared with us stories from their work in Honduras. In Q3, we launched our small grant program, supporting the Igwe Witch Project. Another highlight of Q3 is the work of our Education beneficiary Kasese Humanist Primary School, whose motto “With science, we can progress” made it an immediate favorite among our staff and supporters! During the quarter, they focused on creating sustainability on their campus through their food programs. In Q4, we supported an inner-city program in our Natural World category: DC Greenworks builds green roofs, installs rain barrels to divert storm water, and provides jobs in the Washington, DC, area.

Volunteers Beyond Belief

This year, our Volunteers Beyond Belief teams worked to be an integral part of their communities. They volunteered at food banks, worked with Habitat for Humanity, and contributed to relief efforts. We made great leaps in the program, adding new teams with a total of 2,200 volunteers in 23 states. The Harvard Humanists worked to pack a whopping forty thousand meals. After Superstorm Sandy, the Freethought Society reached out to help form the Hurricane Sandy Emergency Relief Fund Committee to raise and distribute funds, an action recognized by the Washington Post. To end the year, VBB and the FBB Partners Program merged to create the Beyond Belief Groups Network.

Crisis Response

Our Crisis Response program sprang into action twice this year. Supporters raised $4,500 to support volunteer firefighter departments in Colorado whose resources were depleted by wildfires. In October, Hurricane Sandy slammed Haiti and then converged with a major weather system in the northeast creating Superstorm Sandy. Our Crisis Response program raised more than $18,000 to support the International Medical Corps’ effort to bring disaster relief to Haiti and Team Rubicon, which showed determination and compassion as it deployed a thousand veterans to aid in the cleanup in the northeast. The generous support of FBB members supported these organizations in their efforts to aid those in need.

Light the Night

FBB’s inaugural campaign as a national partner of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has been an emphatic success. Over the course of the year, more than 1,300 walkers from almost 150 local teams coordinated their fundraising efforts in support of medical research and compassionate patient care. Thanks to a generous matching grant from the Stiefel family, our national community of humanists has raised close to half a million dollars for this extraordinary cause. We appreciate the endeavors of all of our team members and look forward to building upon our achievements in 2013.

All of these programs are made possible by your generous donations and support throughout the year, and we’re so proud to have such a dedicated base driving our efforts. If you’re interested in making a one-time donation to help us continue being able to offer these programs, and to expand our efforts in the future, visit our one-time donation page. And as always, thank you for your continued support—we look forward to another exciting year serving humanity when in need, and improving the world that we share.

This past quarter, your generous donations went to improving nutrition, protecting animals in the face of cruelty, bringing humanist education to Uganda, fighting for equitable treatment in our justice system, and building communities safer for diversity. You collectively raised $47,150 dollars for Q3 2012, surpassing last quarter’s donations by more than $4,000.

Equal Justice Initiative, our Human Rights beneficiary, received the most donations, with Poverty & Health and Education taking a close second and third, respectively. We continued to support Leo Igwe’s study through individual donations and an additional small grant, and we supported the brave firefighters protecting Coloradans amid tremendous wildfire destruction and service budget cuts last summer.

Final humanist giving grant totals for the third quarter of 2012 are as follows:
 

Thanks for participating in the humanist giving program, and for supporting Foundation Beyond Belief through direct donations. It’s the support of friends like you that keeps us on track toward building a better world.

We are highlighting key programs and impacts of our fourth-quarter beneficiaries on our blog and in our weekly newsletter. No need to be a member to subscribe to our mailing list—just scroll to the top of the page and provide your email address. Click here to subscribe to our blog via your RSS feed. Thanks again, and we look forward to another successful quarter.

CHARITY VETTING FOR THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2013 IS UNDERWAY! You can nominate a charity here, or you can get involved directly in the vetting process by joining the FBB Charity Research Forum on Facebook.

In the second quarter of 2012, the compassionate humanist members of Foundation Beyond Belief donated a total of $42,310 to our featured charities. As always, each of the five featured organizations inspired strong member support during the quarter. But for the first time since our launch, Poverty & Health claimed the highest level of member support, followed by perpetual member favorites Human Rights and Education.

We are also proud to introduce the first recipient of our new Small Grant Awards program — the groundbreaking Igwe Witchcraft Accusation Field Study in Northern Ghana. Led by prominent Nigerian humanist Leo Igwe, this unique research program will focus on women currently held against their will in several “witch camps” after being accused of witchcraft and expelled from their villages. 

Final grants totals for the Humanist Giving Program in second quarter 2012: 

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A unique field study of witchcraft accusations in Ghana will receive the first award in the new Small Grants program of Foundation Beyond Belief.

Witchcraft accusations constitute a serious threat to human rights and individual safety in several regions of Africa, none moreso than Northern Ghana. Over a thousand Ghanaian women are currently detained in “witch camps” after being accused of witchcraft and expelled from their villages. A study of these camps will be undertaken by Leo Igwe, one of the most prominent and acclaimed humanists in the African continent. 

“The consequences of witchcraft accusation are dire and diverse,” says Igwe. “Those accused of witchcraft are often subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment by states and non-state agents. They are feared and treated as enemies to the society. Those alleged to be witches are attacked, exiled or lynched by mobs, forced to drink concoctions by local diviners or traditional medicine men and women, subjected to abusive treatment in the name of exorcism by pastors and other god-men and women, persecuted and jailed by the states. Some of those accused of witchcraft and survive the ordeal are then exiled from their homes are forced to live in camps or on the streets. Witchcraft accusation is at the root of egregious instances of human rights abuses and social problems across many regions of Africa. They fuel hatred, conflicts, and mistrust in families and communities across Africa.”

Foundation Beyond Belief is proud to support Leo Igwe’s important work with an initial grant of $2,000, funded from our Greatest Need/Small Grants option. Beginning in July, we will also host an ongoing donation portal through which individuals may continue to support this project.