Humanitarian

International Literacy Day

Brianne Bilyeu, 1,334 Comments

Today is International Literacy Day. International Literacy Day is an effort of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and every year it seeks to highlight to the international community the importance of literacy.

I grew up in a culture that rewards education and I was raised in a home environment that supported learning. I can’t imagine a world where I can’t read. I can’t imagine not being able to read a road sign, follow instructions for taking medicine, confidently sign a rental contract, fill out a job application, pick out canned products from a grocery store, get important news by text or handwritten message, vote, learn to drive, research my rights in papers or on the internet, fact check things that other people told me. Continue reading “International Literacy Day” →

International Literacy Day
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Pathfinders Project – Support Ben!

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , 794 Comments

I’ve had a chance to meet and work with Ben Sweatervest at several secular and skeptical conferences. He is a passionate, optimistic and forward-thinking Whovian humanist, and all-around awesomesauce person.

And he needs your help. Specifically, yer monies.

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Image shows Ben Sweatervest posing with his Staff/Speaker Skeptech 2013 badge and a huge smile.

Ben has committed to spending a full year as a Pathfinder. The Pathfinders Project is a “yearlong international service trip (July 2013-July 2014) sponsored by Foundation Beyond Belief, a non-profit organization created to focus, encourage, and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of secular humanists.

The work that Ben and his fellow Pathfinders are doing will support the launch of the Humanist Service Corp, a future program of the Foundation Beyond Belief.

This project will have benefits for the individuals involved, for Humanist communities and the movement as a whole. They’ve put quite a bit of work into demonstrating why a program like the Pathfinders and the Humanist Service Corp is needed, what they’re hoping to accomplish, how they’re measuring success, how they will meet the needs of the volunteers who work with them and how they will efficiently work with already-existing service organizations.

But back to Ben! Ben, as one of the Pathfinders, is raising money to support this project. Click on this link or the image below to be taken to his Indiegogo fundraising page. There you can learn more about the project, see a personal video of Ben explaining why he’s involved and where the money will be going. Oh yeah – and then you can donate!

SBSVA

Image shows a screenshot of Ben’s IndieGogo fundraising website – the project title and information is a banner across the top of the page, Ben’s YouTube video takes up the left hand side, and his goal stats are on the right.

Good luck, Ben! Thank you for your service.

Pathfinders Project – Support Ben!

Weekend Report

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , 579 Comments

I was hoping to get a lot of writing done this weekend because there is SO MUCH TO WRITE ABOUT! I got exactly zero writing done, but looking back on my weekend, it turns out I did some pretty cool stuff.

Friday night was supposed to be a night of relaxing and hanging out with the Virtual Drinking Skeptically (VDS) gang. Unfortunately, work setbacks trashed that idea. I didn’t have all my ducks in a row and ended up working until midnight 🙁  Long story short, I grabbed some material (calibrators) for a study and forgot to check the expiration date. After doing all of the set-up on Friday morning, I went to use the calibrators and discovered that they were expired. No problem, I’ll just go grab a new lot, right? Ohhhh…so sad for me: there are no unexpired lots left in the freezer. Luckily, my company makes the darned things on site, so I’ll just go over to manufacturing and pick some up. Three hours later…

At some point during the morning’s series of fiascoes I noted with that sort of inappropriate hilarity that often precludes a mental breakdown that I was going through various stages of grief as my Friday night went up in flames.

  • Shock/Denial: WHAT? How the hell are the calibrators expired? What do you mean we don’t have any extra calibrators in the building? How is that possible? I am NOT letting this get in the way of Virtual Drinking Skeptically tonight.
  • Pain/Guilt: How could I be so stupid as to not check the expiration date before I started!? How could I have everything in place and forget that? I haven’t been to a VDS in months and I feel horrible for not showing up and supporting it because it’s awesome and I can’t believe I’ve ruined my evening like this!
  • Anger/Bargaining: How did NO ONE stock calibrators? Why did this have to happen tonight!? Maybe I could use the expired cals and write some sort of justification. No? Okay, if I can just get the study started, I can sneak away and come in over the weekend to finish things up.
  • Depression/Loneliness: This sucks. I hate working late on Friday nights. Everyone goes home to relax and start their weekend and I’m going to be stuck here pipetting samples until kingdom come. Which isn’t coming, so that means FOREVER. I’m not making it to VDS.
  • Upward Turn: Okay… I have new calibrators. The instruments are all ready to go. Let’s calibrate and see if the controls pass. Samples are thawed, time to start pipetting. If I can load 20 samples per hour and I’ve got 149 samples to load… awwww, man. Wait, calm…I can do this.
  • Acceptance/Hope: Okay, there’s no way I’m getting out of here in time for VDS, but I’ll just have to plan to make the next one. And hey, everything’s running well and I’m going to make it through at least half of these samples today. I’ll come back on Sunday and finish ’em up. And I’ll still have all of Saturday. Every little thing… is gonna be alright.

That’s a whole lot of emotion to go through over the course of a day! Like I said earlier, I left at midnight, but I did get to come home to a sympathetic partner and a whiskey nightcap. So that was nice.

Continue reading “Weekend Report” →

Weekend Report

New Faces

Brianne Bilyeu, , , 556 Comments

Three things this today:

Minnesota State Primaries

If you live in Minnesota you have an opportunity to participate in the State Primary. The biggies on the ballot are US Representative and US Senator. There were also school board and judicial nominations on my particular ballot.

Another Thank You

Thank you to a new Kiva lending buddy. Since I posted my initial challenge there have been three people who have been willing, able and wanting to participate. And in even more exciting Kiva-related news, I’m going to start lending money as part of the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious lending team. As part of a lending team I lend money as an individual, but I can count each loan towards the impact of one team. So, this is an atheism visibility project. Right now the atheist team is ranked 2nd of all teams on Kiva. Guess who just slightly ahead of us? Yup – Kiva Christians.

Anyway, our latest loan was made to Rose from Murang’a, Kenya. Rose is a mom, with one of her three children still in school. She is a tailor and farmer, growing produce and raising dairy animals. She wants use this loan to buy a chuff cutter, which is used to cut feed into smaller pieces for the animals she raises, and I guess makes life way easier. You can read her full story here.

A New Face At Biodork

I am very excited to announce that a new regular column will be appearing on Biodork twice a week. Meet Ellen Bulger!

Ellen is a life-long atheist – well, since the age of 11 – and a regular Freethought Blogs reader and commenter. She describes herself as a naturalist and appreciator of entomology and mollusks. She is a freelance writer and prolific photographer; you can browser her collection of over 22,000 photos over at Flickr. Ellen wants to show the world that we can find joy and beauty in this world without believing in superstition or gods.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Ellen will be guest blogging her photographs and writings. Her first piece will go up later this afternoon. – Welcome, Ellen!

New Faces

Thank You

Brianne Bilyeu, , , 382 Comments

Earlier this week I invited you to join me on the microlending website, Kiva. I asked that if you were willing, able and wanted to join after learning more about the institution, to join through my personal invitation link so that I could receive $25 Kiva bonuses. Two of you took me up on my invitation, resulting in $50 worth of loan money that I was able to turn around tonight. Here’s who we’re funding:

 This is Ruth Del Carmen from Guasmo, Ecuador. She owns her own house, and since separating from her husband she is raising two children on her own. She runs a restaurant and sells cosmetics to supplement her income. She is planning on using this loan to buy chairs, table and a display case for her businesses. You can read her full story here.

Meet the Nuestro Sueño Group from Temuco, Chile. Group loans can be a good investment because members of a community come together to borrow, and have group support and peer pressure to make timely repayments. Members of Nuestro Sueño are planning on using their loans to purchase products for their individual businesses, which include food, clothing, crafts, and firewood sales.

Thanks for making these two loans possible, my Kiva loan buddies.

If you have an interest in joining Kiva, I invite you to join through my link here – Kiva is still giving $25 bonuses out!

Thank You

6 O’Clock BS: Kiva Bonuses!

Brianne Bilyeu, , 367 Comments

You may know that the Hubby and I support the microlending program, Kiva.

Here’s a cartoon from the Kiva website. It draws (literally) a very high-level picture  of how Kiva works:

So yeah. Pretty cool stuff. The Hubby and I have been re-investing two $25 loans for a couple of years now, but we’d like to get to a place where we can do more. We’ve been part of loans to three people. Their stories are linked below if you’re interested.

  • Nidal – A shoe salesman from Gaza, Palestine
  • Ansu – A shoe salesman from Bo, Sierra Leone
  • Gina – A hog farmer from Linglingay, Angadanan, Philippines

If this is a program that want to get involved with – maybe you’ve been thinking about getting involved for a while – how about now? Because if you do it now AND if you do it through me, I get a $25 bonus from Kiva that I can invest in a new Kiva loan. Let me be clear: I get a $25 bonus for every person who joins up through me – no limits until the bonus money runs out site-wide. That’s potentially a lot of money that one could put to good use!

This is an offer that all existing Kiva members can take advantage of, so if you know a friend who does Kiva and you’d rather they get an extra Kiva bonus – do it. No hard feelings. Honest. Girl Scouts honor. I believe in Kiva, and I think you should get involved if you can and if you think it’s a good program.

But just in case you do want to join Kiva through me and wouldn’t mind helping me and the Hubby earn some bonus loan money, click below to be redirected to Kiva’s website and my personal sign-up page:

Join Kiva and Biodork to Help Change Lives

6 O’Clock BS: Kiva Bonuses!

6 O'Clock BS: Kiva Bonuses!

Brianne Bilyeu, , 210 Comments

You may know that the Hubby and I support the microlending program, Kiva.

Here’s a cartoon from the Kiva website. It draws (literally) a very high-level picture  of how Kiva works:

So yeah. Pretty cool stuff. The Hubby and I have been re-investing two $25 loans for a couple of years now, but we’d like to get to a place where we can do more. We’ve been part of loans to three people. Their stories are linked below if you’re interested.

  • Nidal – A shoe salesman from Gaza, Palestine
  • Ansu – A shoe salesman from Bo, Sierra Leone
  • Gina – A hog farmer from Linglingay, Angadanan, Philippines

If this is a program that want to get involved with – maybe you’ve been thinking about getting involved for a while – how about now? Because if you do it now AND if you do it through me, I get a $25 bonus from Kiva that I can invest in a new Kiva loan. Let me be clear: I get a $25 bonus for every person who joins up through me – no limits until the bonus money runs out site-wide. That’s potentially a lot of money that one could put to good use!

This is an offer that all existing Kiva members can take advantage of, so if you know a friend who does Kiva and you’d rather they get an extra Kiva bonus – do it. No hard feelings. Honest. Girl Scouts honor. I believe in Kiva, and I think you should get involved if you can and if you think it’s a good program.

But just in case you do want to join Kiva through me and wouldn’t mind helping me and the Hubby earn some bonus loan money, click below to be redirected to Kiva’s website and my personal sign-up page:

Join Kiva and Biodork to Help Change Lives

6 O'Clock BS: Kiva Bonuses!

Hamza Kashgari Fails Appeal

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , 416 Comments

Hamza Kashgari has not yet been charged for his blasphemous tweets. After the tweets, he feared for his life and fled Saudia Arbia for Malaysia. Malaysian immigration officials – at the request of Saudia Arabia – sent Hamza back. If he is charged and found guilty of insulting Islam and Prophet Muhammad, he could face execution by the state.

Continue reading “Hamza Kashgari Fails Appeal” →

Hamza Kashgari Fails Appeal

Women Deliver 50

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , 608 Comments

This is exciting.

Women Deliver is a global advocacy group that works to enable safe motherhood, gender equality, girls’ education, poverty reduction, combating HIV/AIDS, maternal and newborn health, and other issues that are related to helping women lead healthy, happy, fulfilling lives.

Women Deliver has been hosting a contest called Women Deliver 50, in which they received over 500 nominations of projects that are meant to benefit women in the areas of

  • Technologies and Innovations
  • Educational Initiatives
  • Health Modernization
  • Advocacy and Awareness Campaigns
  • Leadership and Empowerment Programs

Continue reading “Women Deliver 50” →

Women Deliver 50

Free Hamza Kashgari

Brianne Bilyeu, , 352 Comments

I learned about this story on Greg Laden’s X Blog:

Saudi citizen and journalist Hamza Kashgari tweeted, on Muhammad’s birthday, sent three tweets:

  • On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
  • On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
  • On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

I found these to be poignant thoughts about Hamza’s relationship with the Prophet. Others found it to be apostasy (a desertion from one’s religion) and have called for his death. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocratic monarchy, and apostasy is a religious crime punishable by death.

It is a subjective call whether or not Hamza Kashgari’s tweet constitutes apostasy; Kashgari will go to trial and a court will make that call. But after the media attention of this matter I am not very optimistic about his chances of escape from death. Kashgari had fled to Malaysia, but was detained upon his arrival and flown back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Amnesty International considers Hamza Kashgari a prisoner of conscience.

As Ophelia Benson points out, the media loves a good rally for justice, and if enough popular pressure can be brought to bear, perhaps it could make a difference in the fate of this brave, intelligent, freethinking Saudi man. Join the Facebook group Free Hamza Kashgari and sign this Change.org petition for his release. At the very least, we need to make this persecution visible. This suppression of human rights is what can happen when a country is ruled by theocracy.

Free Hamza Kashgari