Search results for: FreeOK

By Elizabeth Minutello, Beyond Belief Network intern

FreeOK, a Beyond Belief Network team, has offered to host a national effort for nonbelievers to participate in St. Baldrick’s head-shaving fundraising event. St. Baldrick’s Foundation exists specifically to fund childhood cancer research, and they are best known for their head-shaving events in which “Shavees” collect money from friends and family and have their head shaved in solidarity with patients.

If you put together a Shave team to join the FreeOK team, FreeOK will send your team a swag bag. In addition, send us a picture from your shaving event and FreeOK will give a t-shirt to each of your shaved participants! You can register on their team page and do the shaving at one of your regular group events (we suggest planning a shaving event during the last week of April to count as a Week of Action event).

If you’re a resident of Oklahoma City, or live nearby, consider attending the event on May 4. The event promises to be an exciting occasion with a live music series featuring local artists, charitable shopping opportunities, raffles, prizes for participation, and of course, the head-shaving ceremony. If you’re in the area during this charity event, stop and spend a few hours. 

Let’s show how a big an impact a national humanist response can make on pediatric cancer research! 

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By Elizabeth Dorssom

Congratulations to the Beyond Belief Network’s December Team of the Month: FreeOK!

FreeOK was chosen for December because of their fantastic record of volunteering and philanthropic programming, particularly the Holiday Humanist Gifting project. FreeOK created this project in November in order to provide gifts to foster children and other needy children. Children nominated for the project provided FreeOK with wish lists, which were made available to volunteering sponsors and as Amazon wish lists. Impressively, as of December 2, 100% of the children have been adopted! However, donations are still being accepted to fully fund the Holiday Humanist Giving project. Any excess donations will be held for the 2014 season unless a crisis occurs, like the tornadoes that struck the area in May. In the event of a crisis, the excess funds will be spent on recovery and disaster relief.

FreeOK also held a blood drive in November through the Oklahoma Blood Institute, with 28 donors and a food drive to benefit the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma—100 pounds of food were collected! They regularly hold drives for food, blood, toys, and books to benefit their community. In addition, they have continued their work cleaning up areas devestated by tornadoes earlier this year. They volunteered several times in the weeks directly following the tornadoes and returned more recently to help sort supplies for the people living in temporary housing in their area.

Team of the Month recognition is a benefit to joining Beyond Belief Network and submitting reports to us about your community service activities and philanthropic efforts. In order to be considered, your group must be a Level One Beyond Belief Network team and you must submit at least one event report during the month. Team of the Month selection is based on the number, length, variety, and documentation (e.g., submitted pictures, blog posts, videos, etc.) of events.

Teams can only be Team of the Month once per calendar year. If your local group does great service work, but isn’t a member of BBN, you can join anytime! In addition to recognition, your team can qualify for free t-shirts and grants. If your local humanist group doesn’t volunteer, but you’d like to start, we’d love to help! For teams new to secular service, we offer tons of ideas, event guides, and advice.

Do you live near Oklahoma City? The FreeOK freethought convention will be sponsoring a literacy drive to benefit schools affected by the Oklahoma tornadoes. On Saturday, June 22, the convention will act as a drop location for book donations and monetary contributions for creating a mobile library/book store or rebuilding/restocking school libraries. Click here to learn more.

By Elizabeth Dorssom, BBN intern

Foundation Beyond Belief’s Beyond Belief Network is a network of secular humanist groups volunteering in their communities and raising money for FBB’s featured charities and programs. Any group with a public secular humanist or atheist identity is welcome to join, regardless of experience or group size. In January, BBN is observing National Mentoring Month and encouraging teams to forge mentoring relationships with young adults or other secular humanist groups.

December’s Team of the Month, FreeOK, reported on their Holiday Humanist Gifting Project:

“Throughout the months of November and December, FreeOK registered 102 needy children in Oklahoma to be recipients of gifts from volunteers through the Humanist Gifting Project. We had 47 direct adoptions (volunteers gift-adopting specific children from our list) with the rest coming in purchases from the Amazon wish list we set up for national support. The bulk of the gifts, being taken to local recovery shelter Jordan’s Crossing, was picked up Friday, with the rest being delivered as far as Tulsa by volunteer drivers from OKC on Christmas Eve.”

We loved this event, and we’ve been encouraging beneficiaries and BBN teams to use Amazon wish lists as a fundraising tool.

The Humanist Community at Harvard recently opened the Humanist Hub, a nonreligious community center in Harvard Square. At their grand opening event, they had a great lineup of speakers and showcased their humanist values by organizing a food drive for the Greater Boston Food Bank.

Lehigh Valley Humanists (LVH) hosted a free Christmas dinner to homeless people and retirees in their community. One of the LVH members owns a pizza restaurant and decided to offer a free dinner to area homeless and retirement community shut-ins. A few hundred meals were either served at the restaurant or delivered door to door to the retirement communities. Restaurant staff cooked the meals: ham, turkey, and all the sides/trimmings of a traditional holiday meal. LVH worked with other volunteers to greet guests, serve food, deliver food, and bus tables. This event was featured in a segment on a local news station, WFMZ-TV, and in The Morning Call, a local paper.

Illini Secular Student Alliance teamed up with the University of Illinois Red Cross Club to host a blood drive with the Red Cross. In the University YMCA, ISSA encouraged group members and friends to donate blood. In total, 43 units of blood were collected, which was higher than their quota! In November, ISSA also organized a charity benefit concert, Rock the Night, featuring seven local bands. They raised more than $600 and donated the proceeds to ISSA’s Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Walk team and the Foundation for International Medical Relief for Children.

Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry helped the Charleston Parks Conservancy trim back existing plants and plant new bulbs in a city park. They recently reached Level Three of Beyond Belief Network by having at least twelve service events in a single calendar year!

If you are a member of a secular humanist or atheist group and would like to participate in community service projects under the national umbrella of Foundation Beyond Belief, join Beyond Belief Network. We welcome all atheist groups interested in service, from groups with extensive volunteer experience to newly formed groups new to secular service. By aggregating our efforts, we show the world that all we really need is charity and goodness to make the world a better place.