Category: Outreach

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Donate to sponsor a conference about human trafficking

The International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference, which is put on by the University of Toledo, Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute, recent­ly reached out to us to ask if we could spon­sor this years con­fer­ence that will be held vir­tu­al­ly in September. This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for SHoWLE to have our name out pub­licly in sup­port of an event that fits in with our val­ues.

They have spon­sor­ship lev­els with the low­est pack­age being $500 which would have our name and logo in the pro­gram and web­site and would pro­vide three one day tick­ets we could give out to donors.

Our goal is to raise $500 by June 30th for our spon­sor­ship. If you donate and want to attend we will have the tick­ets avail­able on a first come first serve basis. The largest spon­sor­ship pack­age is $5000 and each pack­age comes with more free tick­ets but our goal for now is $500.

We will donate any funds we raise to help with the con­fer­ence.

To donate for our spon­sor­ship fol­low the link below:

SHoWLE Sponsorship Campaign

Here is infor­ma­tion about the con­fer­ence from their web­site:

“Human traf­fick­ing is one of the most preva­lent and active crim­i­nal enter­pris­es affect­ing our local, nation­al, and inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Responses to com­bat traf­fick­ing include pre­ven­tion, pro­tec­tion, pros­e­cu­tion, and part­ner­ship. The International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference is proud to be the host of the old­est and largest aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence on human traf­fick­ing in the world. As the world’s lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence on this top­ic, we serve as the hub through which prac­ti­tion­ers, pol­i­cy mak­ers, researchers, crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­es, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, social work­ers, and more become edu­cat­ed and equipped to pro­vide the best local and glob­al respons­es pos­si­ble. We remain com­mit­ted to edu­cat­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and we need your help!

The 22nd Annual International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference will be host­ed vir­tu­al­ly on September 17–19, 2025 and will high­light a vari­ety of skilled pre­sen­ters at the fore­front of both human traf­fick­ing and social jus­tice issues. This year’s con­fer­ence will fea­ture over 100 pre­sen­ta­tions and thou­sands of atten­dees tun­ing in from all cor­ners of the world. Attendees will learn how to iden­ti­fy risk fac­tors, improve respons­es for vic­tims, and learn how we can col­lec­tive­ly move for­ward with an agen­da for change.”

https://www.traffickingconference.com

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Resources to help support Democracy

People protesting in support of science

SHoWLE recent­ly cre­at­ed a new resource page that has links to tools and sources to help us sup­port democ­ra­cy.

These links include links to liked mind­ed groups and news sources that actu­al­ly cov­er the real news and not the cor­po­rate white-washed ver­sion we see most often.

The title of the new page is Supporting Democracy and can be found under our Resources menu on the web­site.

Also includ­ed is links to new videos cre­at­ed by President Doug Berger that helps the view­er set­up and use the My Ohio Legislature and GovTrack.us leg­is­la­tion track­ing web­sites.

If you have any sug­ges­tions or cor­rec­tions for this new resource please let us know.

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Our President will host a webinar on speaking out publicly

Our President, Douglas Berger, will be host­ing a work­shop about speak­ing up for Humanism in pub­lic — from print to invo­ca­tions. There will be three con­nect­ed ses­sions start­ing on January 16, 2025 via Zoom.

The work­shop is being put on by the American Humanists Association’s Center for Education

Seats are lim­it­ed. To reg­is­ter and for more infor­ma­tion vis­it

https://bit.ly/SpeakUpHumanists

This is not an offi­cial SHoWLE pro­gram.

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Help Us Sponsor A Family This Year

One of our com­mu­ni­ty out­reach­es we’ve done, real­ly since SHoWLE was found­ed, is spon­sor­ing a fam­i­ly through the Lucas County Children’s Services. They match us with a fam­i­ly and we donate gifts to help make their hol­i­day sea­son a mer­ry one. Now through December 8th we are col­lect­ing gifts. Check out the details below.

Thank you to all the donors for anoth­er excel­lent gift dri­ve. Here is the result of our work:

We intend to par­tic­i­pate in 2025.

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Help Us Fund Our Kid’s Movie Event

Donate to our Kid's Movie fund image

Our cur­rent ser­vice project is to host a free movie and piz­za for kids at the West Toledo Branch Library each month. We have had good turn out each time, aver­ag­ing about 20 kids and some care­givers. We would like to con­tin­ue this project into 2025. If you can help fund the project please do.

Here is mes­sage from our President Douglas Berger:

The first place I lived when I moved to Toledo 8 years ago was on Lewis Avenue in the Five Points neigh­bor­hood. The near­est library branch was West Toledo in Library Village. This is a clas­sic Tudor style build­ing and is busy much of the time.

Our co-founder Shawn grew up in the Library Village area and want­ed to do a ser­vice project that was focused on the kids in the area. This area is mod­er­ate to low income area and with that peo­ple have mon­ey at the begin­ning of the month and by the end of the month not so much. Shawn hatched the idea of show­ing a movie and offer­ing free piz­za and oth­er snacks for the kids at the end of the month.

We show movies from the Disney library and pro­vide Marco’s Pizza and oth­er snacks like baby car­rots and bananas. We don’t talk about Humanism or our group since that is what church­es tend to do when hav­ing free kid activ­i­ties — pros­e­ly­tize. We just want the kids to come to the base­ment audi­to­ri­um, sit back, and have fun for a cou­ple of hours.

Shawn and sev­er­al of us have fund­ed the project through September but now we need your help. It can cost up to $100 for each event and we would like to con­tin­ue the project for a year. We would need at least $300 to fin­ish 2024 and $1200 to cov­er the whole of 2025. We will be look­ing for addi­tion­al sources of fund­ing but we hope you can help now.

To Donate, use the link below:

https://humanistswle.org/donations/kidsmovie

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Another Old West End Fest In The Books

SHoWLE enjoyed anoth­er Old West End Festival on June 1st and 2nd this year. We had sev­er­al peo­ple join our email list and we talked to many more who stopped by. New this year was a dona­tion col­lec­tion box and we brought in $9.18.

The Prize Wheel was just as pop­u­lar with the kids and the young at heart but it did suf­fer some dam­age from overnight rain between Saturday and Sunday. We will have it restored and bet­ter than ever for the Maumee Summer Fair in August.

SHoWLE wants to thank the vol­un­teers that spent their week­end help­ing staff the booth — Ed, Michaelene, Anne, and Shawn. We also thank the donors that fund­ed the booth space and much of the swag we hand­ed out this week­end.

Here are some snaps tak­en dur­ing the event:

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Donating Cash to Food Banks

At our November meet­ing, it was men­tioned that food banks could use cash dona­tions in addi­tion to the usu­al food dona­tions. Cash dona­tions can actu­al­ly help more clients of the food bank than direct food dona­tions.

We also acknowl­edge that the need for food banks last all year and not just for the hol­i­days. SHoWLE will be arrang­ing some vol­un­teer time at a local food bank ear­ly in 2024.

This is just a list of the two main food banks in Lucas coun­ty.

Toledo Northwestern Ohio Food Bank
Seagate Food Bank

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Please Take Our Survey

Each year we try to dis­cov­er how our friends and mem­bers feel about SHoWLE. Please fill out the sur­vey below. You can be anony­mous but please be hon­est. It will be open until 10/1/2023. If you wish to tell us some­thing not in the sur­vey like you moved or some­thing use our con­tact form for that or make sure you use your email address in the sur­vey

If there is no embed­ded sur­vey above click on this link…

*Note* All respons­es and infor­ma­tion shared in the sur­vey will be for inter­nal use only and not shared out­side the Board of Directors except for gen­er­al aggre­gate results.

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Glass City Humanist Coming To Toledo Radio

Glass City Humanist cover art next to WAKT logo

We are pleased to announce that start­ing soon, the Glass City Humanist pod­cast, an out­reach of Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, will be mak­ing a 1 hour month­ly pro­gram that will be heard on WAKT 106.1 FM in Toledo and on the Internet.

We Act Radio is a com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion giv­ing the res­i­dents of Toledo a way to know each oth­er through music, talk, and oth­er forms of pro­gram­ming. The con­tent is gen­er­at­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty and by request of the com­mu­ni­ty. It pro­vides a voice for com­mu­ni­ties that may not have a voice in the media.

Glass City Humanist, pro­duced and host­ed by SHoWLE President Douglas Berger, will use the time on WAKT to intro­duce Humanism and the group to a big­ger audi­ence in Toledo and by exten­tion lis­ten­ers to the radio web­site. The exact con­tent won’t dif­fer too much from the con­tent heard on the pod­cast but GCH will be able to do dif­fer­ent things that might not be pos­si­ble with just the pod­cast.

“We plan on doing things like ask­ing for lis­ten­er ques­tions that will be read in the next episode,” the host Douglas Berger said. “We will also be able to inter­view peo­ple in a prop­er stu­dio instead of just on Zoom or my house.”

There also might be chance at some future point to do a live show.

Details are still being final­ized and we will let every­one know when the shows will start air­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion about Glass City Humanist vis­it https://glasscityhumanist.show and for more infor­ma­tion about We Act Radio WAKT 106.1 check out https://toledoradio.org

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Remember SHoWLE on GivingTuesday

Showing logo for GivingTuesdayNWO
Douglas Berger — President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie

Hello, I’m Doug Berger, founder and President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. I want to remind you that Giving Tuesday is on November 29th and we would like to be your choice for your giv­ing this year.

SHoWLE is the only active group in Northwest Ohio that is a demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber run group pro­vid­ing a sup­port­ive — diverse — safe space for human­ists and the non-religious. Our goal is Building Community Through Compassion & Reason For A Better Tomorrow.

We know peo­ple are lim­it­ed in how many groups you can sup­port, we know that under our cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate lots of peo­ple are either strug­gling or have had to cut back. I hope we make the cut for your tax deductible dona­tions this GivingTuesday.

The sim­ple fact is there is no orga­nized effort, in Northwest Ohio, to help sup­port the non-religious. We rep­re­sent about 20% of the pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al. Humanists and the non-religious don’t have the mil­lions of dol­lars or hun­dreds of vol­un­teers that reli­gious church­es and groups have even as they beg for your dol­lars each year.

SHoWLE sup­ports real reli­gious free­dom like strong sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. We don’t think that pub­lic laws and poli­cies should be based on one par­tic­u­lar reli­gious view.

SHoWLE believes Humanism is a pro­gres­sive phi­los­o­phy of life that, with­out the­ism or oth­er super­nat­ur­al beliefs, affirms our abil­i­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty to lead eth­i­cal lives of per­son­al ful­fill­ment that aspire to the greater good of human­i­ty.

We affirm the dig­ni­ty of every human being and asserts that human­i­ty is respon­si­ble for its own des­tiny, hav­ing with­in itself all that is need­ed to improve the con­di­tions of life.

I hope you will donate to us this year and when you can at oth­er points of the year. If you are inter­est­ed in our group check out one of our meet­ings or even join.

Help us cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty that sup­ports rea­son, sci­ence, and equal­i­ty. Help us build a com­mu­ni­ty through com­pas­sion & rea­son for a bet­ter tomor­row.