Upstate Atheists provided us with some great pictures from their event with Habitat for Humanity in May! They ripped up a bad batch of flooring, put new flooring down, and primed a house.   Picture of the Month recognizes Beyond Belief Network teams who submit great pictures with their reports. 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.  

Recent events in India are helping bring to light just how critical hygiene and access to facilities are to every woman across the world. But a week before, Foundation Beyond Belief’s current Poverty & Health beneficiary 50 Cents. Period (50CP), through their stigma-busting Executive Director Lorrie King, was already leading the charge to bring attention to the lack of facilities in rural communities around the globe, and why #MenstruationMatters. Menstruation Matters was the rallying cry – and Twitter hashtag – for the first ever Menstrual Hygiene Day held on 28 May of this year. The event was held worldwide using platforms like Twitter, Huffington Post and The Guardian and is set to be an annual event from now on. King ...

Sharon Moss remembers Ocean City, New Jersey as a wonderful place to grow up—with one possible exception. “Ocean City has one of the biggest retreat centers for Campus Crusade for Christ,” she says, which swings local politics to the conservative side. “I joke that I grew up in the tiny dot of red in a blue state, then moved to a dot of blue in a sea of red when I came to Columbus, Ohio.” Her family attended a Lutheran ELCA church sporadically when she was very young. “I have very few memories of going,” she says, “but it did leave me with a fondness for Christmas Eve services.” She doesn’t remember ever being a genuine religious believer, and her ...

Congratulations to Beyond Belief Network’s June Team of the Month: Central Ohio United Non-Theists (COUNT)! COUNT was chosen for this honor because of their regular service event schedule and outstanding participation in Week of Action! One of their regular events is to volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) in Columbus, Ohio. RMH provides housing and meals to families with children being treated at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and other area hospitals. Housewarmers work with the guests to provide a home-like environment. They greet the guests, assist with family needs, answer phones, give tours, assist with check-in/check-out, prepare guest rooms after checkout, clean the facility, do laundry, restock supplies and staff the front desk. Six COUNT volunteers worked as Housewarmers for ...

Zachary Cole is the Values in Action Fellow for the Humanist Community at Harvard. The VIA Fellowship is partially funded by a grant from Foundation Beyond Belief. The purpose of this partnership is to develop humanist service and interfaith resources for Beyond Belief Network projects, promote humanist civic engagement nationally, and develop the VIA Fellowship into a national model for humanist service. Since arriving in August 2013, I have had the pleasure of managing the Values in Action (VIA) program, a community service and interfaith initiative based out of the Humanist Community at Harvard (HCH). Over the last eight months, I have organized monthly community service programs, some of which involved collaboration with religious communities and interfaith dialogue. These programs ...