Nonbelief Relief, a new humanitarian agency for atheists, agnostics and freethinkers, has awarded its first grant: $20,000 to Doctors Without Borders.
The Nonbelief Relief board voted to give the grant after the Oct. 3 aerial bombing by the U.S. military of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 22 people: 12 staff members and 10 patients, including three children. Another 37 people, including 19 staff members, were injured.
“The attack constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law,” Doctors Without Borders noted, calling an it “attack on the Geneva Conventions” and a “war crime.” It’s seeking an unprecedented independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission.
Nonbelief Relief is a venue for nonbelievers to give assistance as nonbelievers.
“We think it’s important that it be known that secularists are just as charitable, if not more charitable than the religious, but have simply lacked the infrastructure to give as a united group under the banner of freethought,” says Nonbelief Relief President Annie Laurie Gaylor, who also serves as FFRF co-president.
Others on Nonbelief Relief’s board are Lisa Strand, FFRF’s director of operations; Stephen Hirtle, FFRF’s chair and professor at the University of Pittsburgh; and Madison, Wis.-area businessman and FFRF board member Jim Zerwick, who first proposed the donation.
FFRF is the sole member of the charity. Individuals and FFRF members may add their donations to Doctors Without Borders by designating an online donation for Nonbelief
Relief at: ffrf.org/donate/
