Subject: Re: [Fwd: Humanists of Georgia Grant Progress] Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 01:20:50 -0700 From: "Jared Jackson" To: "Arthur Jackson" Humanists of Georgia Receives Grant from Fund for Chapter Expansion As you may know, we applied for a $2,000 grant from the Fund for Chapter Expansion, which is a trust fund affiliated with the AHA. The grant application was approved, and we were actually given a larger grant of $2,500 to better allow us to share the results of our project with other AHA chapters. We requested a grant to fund an educational program for parents and children to help them answer questions about humanism from those they must interact with. It is often a challenge for both our adult and child members to field questions from neighbors, schoolmates, teachers, work colleagues, business contacts, etc., as they naturally occur during the course of daily life. Humanism and what it means or implies has been the subject of several group discussions in our meetings. It has been obvious to us all that easy answers to questions about our beliefs are hard to come by and cause some stress to our members from time to time. This is even more true for our children, who are often faced with questions from teachers and other adults who are openly unsympathetic to humanism. Not having answers or at least reasonable and comfortable responses is a source of stress and alienation for our children in the context of a hyper-charged religious Southern environment. We will use the grant to fund a series of sessions for adults and children (both separately and together) as well as developing some materials that could be used by members in educating others about our group and humanism in general. The sessions may include some role-playing games to help our members "practice" what they will say in various contexts, etc. The grant will allow us to expand and improve on discussions and children's programs we have already had on this topic and will also allow some experimentation with those topics to find new ways to help our members field inquiries from those we encounter in our daily lives. The project will be conducted primarily by our existing officers and members, although we may try to find an outside "counselor" skilled in roleplaying and the psychology of dealing with these types of issues. The project has just started and will likely span a period of six to nine months. It will involve some outreach programs and advertising to encourage potential new members to attend and become involved with our group. We believe it will be a benefit to existing members while at the same time allowing us to grow our membership. The $2,500 grant will need to be supplemented by another $500 to $1,000 based upon our projected total budget of $3,000 to $3,500. We will raise the remaining funds by soliciting additional donations from members and holding a fund raising event such as a dinner or a silent auction. We can all be very excited about this project, because it will allow us to share our experiences with AHA so that other chapters can benefit from our work. This should raise the visibility of our chapter in humanist circles and may lead to additional opportunities to assist the cause in the future. As mentioned above, we will need the input and assistance of our membership to make this project a success. We will be reporting back to the membership in the next month or so about how you can become involved with the project. In the interim, if you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact Greg Graves, who has volunteered to coordinate the project. I have no ink remember? the file is in text format above. Jared ----- Original Message ----- From: Arthur Jackson To: ; Sent: Thursday, July 01, 1999 7:41 AM Subject: [Fwd: Humanists of Georgia Grant Progress] > Jared, > > Would you please print out the zipped files attached to this document. > > Thanks, > Dad > =========================================== >