Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie
Building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
This weekend SHoWLE will be having a booth at the Toledo Pride Festival at Promenade Park in Downtown Toledo from 12:30 PM to 7 PM. If we get the rain and storms forecast for Saturday afternoon we may leave the festival before 7 PM.
The Secular Survey from American Atheists just released a report this week with some insights into nonreligious LGBTQIA+ people. The report says over half of LGBTQIA+ people are nonreligious and most of them belong to secular groups like SHoWLE.
The top policy issues is protecting the secular public schools, getting rid of religious exemptions to discriminate, and furthering LGBTQIA+ civil rights and equality.
If you are celebrating Pride this weekend and are looking for a welcoming, inclusive community please check us out.
Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is celebrating Charles Darwin’s birthday with an urgent call for blood donations. There is a critical need in our area.
Darwin used science to change how we understand biology and evolution. With modern science and technology, you can impact lives today by donating blood.
For the next 90 days, go to the link below and pledge to give blood, then go to your nearest blood collection center and give the blood. Help make a positive impact to someone in need.
SHoWLE Act Of Humanity Challenge
Take a photo of yourself donating blood and share it! Just use the hashtag #SHoWLEActofHumanityChallenge