2024 Annual Report

2024 was easily the most successful year in Humanist Mutual Aid Network’s history, in terms of fundraising, partnership alliances, and strategic direction. Our NPO gained over $250,000 in contributions last year, we established trusting relationships with humanists in 13 nations, and we streamlined our focus to support primarily humanist primary schools, vocational schools, orphanages, safe houses, pharmacies, and community gardens. We also installed solar energy in multiple locales, due to enthusiastic support from both our donors and the recipients.

Below is a summary of our 2024 accomplishments.

PRIMARY SCHOOL - In Maikunkele, Nigeria, we established Tai Solarin Humanist Primary School in a large leased and remodeled community building. The facility is large enough to accommodate 100+ students and the curriculum is popular with parents in the community because it emphasizes computer education, English and critical thinking.

VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS - N’Djamena Vocational School (Chad) and Takoradi Women Vocational School (Ghana) provide a wide variety of workshops that deliver sustainability skills to their adult humanist enrollees. Computer Training, Digital Marketing, and Shoe-Making from Recycled Tires are three workshops that were were filled to capacity attendance.

SAFE HOUSES - Our Maikunkele Safe House (Nigeria), Maiduguri Safe House (Nigeria), Kolla Women Safe House (Ethiopia) and Blossom Projects Safe House (India) provide shelter to a wide variety of humanists, ranging from LGBTQ to ex-Muslim men to women escaping harem culture to at-risk Dalit and Adivasi girls.

ORPHANAGES - Mind2Love Secular Orphanage (Liberia), Zamanakoy Orphanage (Niger Republic), Freedom Children’s Home (Chad), and Shin Chan Orphanage (Myanmar) are guaranteeing lodging, food, and school supplies to dozens of parentless children. The orphanages are supported with successful sustainability projects, like corn mills, frozen fish markets, and laundry businesses.

PHARMACIES - Socio Meds Pharmacy (Nepal) and Hope Health Pharmacy (a women-owned establishment in Chad) provide discounted, life-saving medicines to humanist and impoverished customers.

COMMUNITY GARDEN - Mozambique Survivors in Cabo Delgado invested our resources to develop an economy based on yams, cassava, garlic, ginger, and chile peppers.

Our newest partners in Lesotho, Morocco, and Kenya are presently being given funds for survival (water tank) and sustainability projects (tea stall, cell phone repair business) but our 2025 goal is to assist them in launching one of the larger projects listed above. Individual funding was also delivered to nearly 100 humanists last year, including several who are persecuted, imprisoned, or fugitives due to their non-belief.

The HuMAN Selection Team, composed of Board members, has been instrumental in defining our direction and scrutinizing proposals. The four Selection Team participants have shrewdly rejected faulty proposals and steered our funding towards a tech-friendly and exclusively humanist direction.

Abundant support was also delivered to numerous nations and projects not listed above. Humanists in 35 nations received our help via approximately $62,000 in allocations. The major recipient was Nigeria, followed by India, Myanmar, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nepal, Niger Republic, Liberia, and Mozambique. A complete list of our 2024 services is available here: https://www.thehuman.team/logbook-recipients

Executive Director Phil Zuckerman and Program Director Hank Pellissier traveled to cities in the USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, and Thailand to advertise HuMAN services at conferences, visit partners, and inspect projects. We aim to organize a Humanist Celebrant Certification program in 2025, via an alliance with humanists in Vienna.

What does HuMAN 2025 look like? Very, very bright. Our bank account is large enough to generously help all of our very reliable partners. Additionally, a fun new “mutual aid networking” aspect of our strategy is scheduling regular Zoom calls that introduce partners, to assist each other in various ways. For example, the Nepal humanist pharmacy provided valuable consultations to the fledgling Chad pharmacy, and our Maiduguri (Nigeria) partner is suggesting projects that might be duplicated in Ghana and Ethiopia.

Our partners are helping each other achieve financial, social, and educational success that attracts their local communities to humanism. Together all of us are coalescing into a congenial multi-continental humanist team, and it feels excellent.

SPECIAL THANKS to all our wonderful humanist partners: Saliu Olumide Saheed, Sadiq Modu Kura, Usman Abdu Abubakar, Esther Gyimah, Altaf Baba, Djamila Shakur, Hein Htet Kyaw, Pooja Koirala, Noura Idries, Jenora Sarafina Joseph, Fatimata Hassana, Amara Tesfaye, Edward Arthur, Jabar Abdul-Malik, Prince Muraguri, Arun Boudh, Wilifried Apfalter

SPECIAL THANKS ALSO to advisors, Selection Team and Board members Dan Beaton, Susan Kuchinskas, Cameo Wood, Mubarak Bala, Werner Haag, Rick Thomas, Jesse Smith, Karen Zelevinsky, Phil Zuckerman, and many others.

& finally a BIG THANK YOU to all our generous donors - without you we would not exist.