Archive for the ‘Foundation’ Category

Next month, we’re launching Perspective Citywide, here in Leeds.

Perspective has been running on campus at the University of Leeds for several years now, starting it’s third run at the end of this month. It’s proved exceedingly popular and led us to us publishing the Perspective Leader’s Guide last year.

However, with it being based on campus it was somewhat limited in the audience we could get and so we really wanted to take it off campus so that everyone could access it.

As a result, we’re launching Perspective Citywide which will be taking place each Wednesday, starting 2 February. Running for 8 weeks, each session will see a different religious speaker joining us to talk about their faith and then open the floor up to a “no question off limits” Q and A with the audience. So if you have a burning question you want to ask, don’t miss out!

You can find out more information on Citywide on the Perspective Course website.

The January issue of our newsletter, Engage, is now available for download. This issue covers the 2010 Worfolk Lecture, the new Perspective Leader’s Guide, the new Humanist Action Group website and it’s holiday food drive and the launch of Intimate Details. It also contains all the regular features and now comes in a more concise two-page format to make it easier to print. You can download it from our website.

At CWF, one of our core aims is promoting education, be it via our courses, our public understanding of science lectures or the online resources and educational material we provide. Today, we are adding a new initiative to this list.

We are creating the Humanist Library of Leeds, a project to build a world standard collection of humanist and naturalist publications in Leeds, United Kingdom. A shining light of reason in the North of England.

You can learn more about the project on its website.

As part of the project, we are looking for donations of items for the library on topics of humanism, naturalism and secularism, and the surrounding subjects – philosophy, theology, natural sciences and other such topics. If you can help the project, please get in touch! You may also want to consider supporting our work by becoming a patron of the library.

You can read more of Chris’s thoughts on the first post of the project’s blog. You can also watch the video below.

On Monday, the Humanist Action Group of Leeds completed it’s holiday food drive. Having spent the previous two weeks collecting food and donations to put together food parcels for local homeless shelters, the group spend the night bringing together all the food and packaging it up.

In total the group managed 24 boxes, most of which had to be duct taped shut due to them overflowing. The lesson for next time – we need bigger boxes!

As we announced last month, the Humanist Community of Leeds is now meeting in the evening. The first of which time slots took place last Sunday where we discussed the differences and similarities between humans and animals as well as the concept of human rights.

Having just sent this message out to everyone in the Humanist Action Group, I thought it was probably worthwhile posting here too…

As you may have seen from the invites that Katie sent out, we’re doing a food drive to put together food parcels for people living in shelters this holiday season – you can find more details on the Facebook event.

There are a number of ways you can get involved…

1. Donating food. We need non-perishable stuff like tinned food, chocolate bars, etc. It costs very little to throw an extra few tins of baked beans or cans of fish in your trolley and Katie has even volunteered to come collect it from you!
    
2. Donating time. We need people to come down on Monday to help make up the parcels and deliver them. One evening for weeks, if not months of feeling good about yourself ;).
    
3. Donating cash. If you don’t have time to do any of the above, then consider making a one time donation – we’ll be doing a Marko run to buy as much food as we can for the parcels, so the more money we have, the more we can buy! You can find our bank details and donation links on the charity’s website.

Thanks for your support!

Chris

Yesterday, the first session of Intimate Details took place at Leeds Atheist Society. Intimate Details is a course which looks at sex, relationships and surrounding issues from a secular perspective – and indeed given it covers a lot of the same material as UCCF’s Pure course, some have cheekily nicknamed it “Impure.”

Yesterday’s session looked at sexuality and the various sexual orientations that exist, taboos and fetishes and the attitude towards sex in society such as sex in the media and education system as well as pornography, prostitution and religion.

Next week’s session will be looking at dating, relationships and sex. You can join us for that at 7pm on Friday 10 December.

Earlier this year we announced the creation of a new fund designed to support public of understanding of science. The idea was to provide funding for an annual lecture on such a topic, hosted by a local group. The first of which took place this Tuesday at the University of Leeds.

Hosted by, Leeds Atheist Society, the first annual Worfolk Lecture was presented by Dr Terrence Kee on the subject of “did life on Earth originate on Earth?”

Dr Kee delivered a fascinating talk, discussing just how resilient and hardy some bacteria are – some can survive extreme cold (such as space), some can survive extreme heat (such as entry into an atmosphere), some can take being crushed, some can survive exposure to high levels of radiation – it’s very, very hard to kill some bacteria! it is therefore conceivable that some may have traveled through space in meteors before making this planet their home.

Much discussion was provoked with almost an hour of questions and answers taking place after the talk – not one to have missed! You can see more photos from the event on our Facebook page.

The new Humanist Action Group website is now live!

HAG was founded in 2009 with the idea that we should stop talking about how Humanism is about living a good and ethical life which makes the most of it for ourselves and those around us and get out there and start making a difference – not because scripture told us we should but because it is the right thing to do.

The new website makes it easier for people to get involved in volunteering – simply fill in your details and enter your nearest town or city. We will then match your details to local volunteering opportunities that HAG is coordinating and let you know when they are available.

From December, the Humanist Community of Leeds is moving it’s meetings to the evening, with doors opening at 5:30pm. We were really impressed with how many people turned out this morning but we believe we can probably double attendance by moving to a later time, based on the feedback we have, so this should make for even better events.