The weekly report on the Secular Policy Institute’s Coalition
by Johnny Monsarrat
This week we’ve been adding coalition members so quickly that we haven’t even had time to post them all and reformat our coalition page. Less than a month from the start of our outreach campaign, we now have 181 members, with another 105 groups talking it through with us, most waiting for their next board meeting to come around.
These groups come from all around the world, with recent joins from Uganda, Ireland, Romania, the Phillipines, the Netherlands, Signapore, Australia, and so many more. We several from the UK and Canada.
Like last week, some of the newest joiners are some of the world’s most important secular groups!
- American Atheists, run by always-in-the-news, international troublemaker President David Silverman, is arguably the world’s most prolific media generating, political lobbying, and legal challenging secular organization in the world. At least, we like ’em.
- Foundation Beyond Belief is our movement’s most prominent charity organization, showcasing nonbelievers as real people through volunteerism and aid, for example by raising more money for leukemia research than any other non-profit in the world. They have a “peace corps” that every nonbeliever should know about, called the Humanist Service Corps.
- The Freethought Society (FS), run by Founder and President Margaret Downey, provides fellowship and services to the non-theist community throughout the US and Canada. The goal of the Freethought Society is to raise awareness and acceptance of the non-theist community, including their Tree of Knowledge and celebrity speaker series.
- Humanist Association of Ireland promotes the ideals and values of Humanism, working for people who choose to live an ethical life without religion. See the SPI’s newsletter article this week on Irish blasphemy laws!
- Humanist Society (Singapore) represents non-religious people in Singapore who pursue ethical and fulfilling lives.
- Uganda Humanist Association promotes secular schools, secular health centers, and has a youth wing, a womens’ organisation, and a library / secular center in Kampala
- The International Freethought Film Festival Foundation‘s annual festival is May 8-10 in Orlando, Florida. Their call for entries ends March 1st!
- Atheist Association of Finland, and I recently was sent this article on religious privilege from Kim Sj├Âstr├Âm of Helsinki Freethinkers.
- Atheist Centre, India will celebrate 75 years with the 9th World Atheist Conference, January 6-7, 2016, and has invited the SPI to speak.
See the coalition list for more, and we’ll be updating and reformatting it fully this week if we can just catch up on emails with the nearly 200 groups wanting to talk with us about the coalition this week! Email johnny@secularpolicyinstitute.net to discuss the benefits of your own group joining.