Tag: community service

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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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People Need Help All Year. SHoWLE Wants To Get There

One of the things that SHoWLE does, that I would like to see do, is assist the com­mu­ni­ty where we live. One project we com­plet­ed for the sec­ond year was adopt­ing a fam­i­ly through Lucas County Children Services for Christmas. Of course the ques­tion that get asks is why only at Christmas when fam­i­lies need help all year round? Why copy what oth­er faith groups do? Those are valid ques­tions and I’ll explain our phi­los­o­phy about com­mu­ni­ty projects.

Douglas Berger — President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie

I am total­ly with those who com­plain about copy­ing reli­gious groups and pulling out the volunteering/donation machine only dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. I think only lim­it­ing such action to the hol­i­days plays into the reli­gious nar­ra­tive that help is only need­ed dur­ing one time of the year so we feel bet­ter about not help­ing at oth­er times.

The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion for year end donat­ing is tax­es. People who are able to deduct dona­tions may want to wait until the end of the year to get their full return on the tax forms the next year.

Some non-profits also use the hol­i­day sea­son to raise aware­ness and dona­tions about their cause dur­ing a time of the year when peo­ple are think­ing about donat­ing time, mon­ey, or things to those who are strug­gling.

The only obsta­cle to SHoWLE help­ing a fam­i­ly all year is we would need to have a group of mem­bers com­mit­ted to help­ing all year. It would not be some­thing to be thrown togeth­er at the last minute IF we have time. There will be times such an endeav­or will be a grind and some­one might not be “feel­ing it” that par­tic­u­lar time or date. I know from past expe­ri­ence with the group I was part of in Columbus that even if you have five or six peo­ple say­ing they will help even­tu­al­ly it is left to one of two peo­ple to do all the work.

I won’t com­mit SHoWLE to a year long effort with­out know­ing we have a sol­id com­mit­ment from vol­un­teers to pull it off. I don’t want to see us com­mit to some­thing and either fail to do it or do it half way. That would make us look bad in the com­mu­ni­ty and might hurt future chances to work with oth­er groups on oth­er projects.

I just don’t think SHoWLE is big enough to sus­tain a year long effort to help a fam­i­ly at this time but we do have the capac­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the lim­it­ed hol­i­day pro­gram through Lucas County although I did reduce the size of the fam­i­ly we helped from 3 peo­ple to two, this year, just so as not to stretch us too far.

SHoWLE will also try to help oth­ers if an emer­gency comes up. Last Christmas we were able to help a fam­i­ly that had been sud­den­ly dropped by a com­pa­ny that had “adopt­ed” them as part of their year end “giv­ing back” to the com­mu­ni­ty that many com­pa­nies do on the hol­i­days. We were able to pull togeth­er some extra resources so that fam­i­ly did­n’t miss out because a com­pa­ny heart­less­ly changed it’s mind.

I am always open to new ideas. If some­one is enthu­si­as­tic about some project and they pret­ty much do the leg work to get it set­up and coor­di­nate it then I am will­ing to try it and pro­mote it to the rest of the group.

Here for Good 2025: [Buy a T-shirt and Support SHoWLE](https://www.jupmodesupply.com/products/secular-humanists-of-western-lake-erie-here-for-good-2025)
Here for Good 2025: [Buy a T-shirt and Support SHoWLE](https://www.jupmodesupply.com/products/secular-humanists-of-western-lake-erie-here-for-good-2025)