Archive for the ‘Foundation’ Category

At CWF we want to make sure that as many people as possible can get access to our events and resources. Because of this, we are today launching the CWF inclusively programme. This will enable those suffering from financial hardship to apply for relief on costs such as event tickets and registration fees so that those would could not normally afford to attend our events are still able to come. This will begin with our Sunrise Conference for which applications are now open.

I’m pleased to announce that the Charity Commission for England and Wales has accepted our application for registered charity status.

This won’t mean a great deal for the day to day operations at CWF. Already having charitable status with HMR&C and Leeds City Council, this latest development is more a confirmation than a new development in the great work we’re doing but we’re more than happy that the Charity Commission are yet another body giving us the thumbs up.

As a consequence we are now registered charity 1137220 and you can find us listed on the Charity Commission’s website here.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our latest web resource, the Secular Portal Resource Library! This is exactly what it says on the tin – a library of resources for secular groups. It houses a huge variety of talks, slides, presentations, letters, forms, document templates and much more all available for secular groups to make use of.

Many groups develop some fantastic resources which would be of great value to other groups and we’re hoping this will provide a great way for groups to exchange material and save time and energy on not having to start from scratch every time they want to put together a top quality presentation, leaflet or document.

There are already several hundred documents in the system with more on there way so do browse around and see if you can find anything which may be of use to you. If you would like to contribute any documents for other groups too, please email them over to us!

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the foundation’s newsletter, Engage. This will be a quarterly newsletter containing all the latest news, events and projects that the foundation is working on. The first issue looks at Enquiry 2010, Atheist, Sunrise and several other initiatives. You can read the online version here.

I’m pleased to congratulate our trustee Gijsbert who has been elected to serve onto the University of Leeds Equality & Diversity Committee for the next three years.

The Equality & Diversity Committee is the highest body at the university for deciding on relevant issues, being chaired by Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Students and Staff Professor Stephen Scott. Members are elected by their fellow university staff members to serve on the committee.

Dr Stoet beat off both other candidates to win the election with a manifesto promising to ensure everyone was given fair representation including majority groups such as the non-religious community on campus who are often discriminated against leading to the atheist student group having to file several discrimination complaints over their three years of existence.

Last weekend saw people from all across the country flock to the Crowne Plaza Hotel Birmingham for the Enquiry 2010 Conference – a weekend on the topic of “atheism in the 21st century.”

Speaking at the conference were Professor A. C. Grayling, Professor Chris French, Andrew Copson, Norman Ralph, Maryam Namazie, Chris Worfolk, Dr Gijsbert Stoet, Dr Evan Harris, Dr Antony Lempert with Saturday night entertainment from Simon Munnery too!

If you missed the event you can see some of the photos from the event on Facebook and Flickr.

We would like to say a big thank you to all our guest speakers who gave their time to be with us over the weekend and indeed all those who attended the conference too. We hope you enjoyed it!

With Enquiry 2010 only two weeks away we’re pleased to announce Norman Ralph has been added to the speaker line-up for the conference.

Founding president of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist & Secular Student Societies, Norman “The No Man” Ralph guided the AHS through it’s first year of operation and continues to play a part on a national scale, regularly speaking at conferences and local groups.

Tickets are still available, £49 standard and £29 student for the weekend. See the Enquiry Conference website for full details.

We are pleased to announce the addition of Simon Munnery to the already exciting line up of speakers for the Enquiry 2010 Conference!

Simon, also known by his stagenames of Alan Parker: Urban Warrior and The League Against Tedium, has previously worked alongside Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and Steve Coogan and his material often wanders onto the topic of atheism and religion.

Indeed I first saw Simon during a show he did with Stewart Lee in York a few months ago and was so impressed that I asked him to speak there and then.

More speakers are still to be announced for Enquiry 2010, so if you haven’t picked up your ticket yet head over to the Enquiry 2010 Conference website and sign up – tickets are available from £49 standard and £29 student!

Last Friday saw the the Answers course start once again at the University of Leeds, hosted by Leeds Atheist Society. Answers is a course for those who have decided they are atheists but are not really sure where to go from there – how do you express your beliefs and make sense of your thoughts? Luckily, Answers has answers!

This morning we held out “Easter Sunday” event at the Humanist Community of Leeds. The day started with Chris talking to BBC Radio Leeds about the event though given so many people were spending time with their family this weekend we were expecting a fairly low turn out.

It was quite a shock then when we got such a turnout, though certainly a pleasant one! The discussions were great, the feedback was positive and Sunday lunch was as enjoyable as ever. Roll on our May meeting!