This holiday season, the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) participated in two service projects. One was an outreach to prisoners and the other was adopting a family.
Humanism for All is a prison outreach program run by the American Humanist Association. For the holiday, members of SHoWLE wrote personal holiday greetings to incarcerated Humanists. We sent out a total of 30 letters.
“They have strict rules with mail at a prison,” SHoWLE President Douglas Berger said. “We couldn’t use any colored paper or anything with glitter because the possibility of mailing contraband, so we were limited to plain sheets of paper and a few templates we printed out from the AHA”
Even though a Humanist may be in prison they are still humans and deserve basic dignity and worth no matter what crime they committed. Holiday greetings are a nice thing to do for people. It shows they aren’t forgotten.
The second project SHoWLE did was adopting a family through Lucas County Children Services. Through donations we collected gifts for a relative caregiver and two boys. Some members shopped for gifts and several members donated cash for the cause.
“I was pleased at the response to the Adopt-A-Family project,” Berger commented. “It’s a good thing that we could give a good holiday for a family that is struggling.”
President Berger did want to stress an important point.
“People and families who are struggling need help all year, not just at the holidays. SHoWLE will strive to participate in service projects through the year that we develop or based on ideas members share with us.”
Feel free to send us your ideas though our contact form.