How to Support FF

Here are some ways you can support Filipino Freethinkers:

  • Donate to support our work
  • Share and talk about us and our work to other people
  • Volunteer
  • Start a chapter in your region or school

Regional Chapters

The Filipino Freethinkers operates largely within Metro Manila, where most of our committee heads and advocacy directors reside. Being an organization fully comprised by volunteers, we’re going to need help in engaging freethinkers who are not located in Metro Manila. If you want to help start your own Filipino Freethinkers regional chapter, here we provide some guidelines.

A Filipino Freethinkers regional chapter must:

  • Promote reason, science, and secularism.
  • Be consistent with the mission and vision of Filipino Freethinkers.
  • Be civil-rights minded and non-discriminatory.
  • Have at least two core leaders who will prepare reports to the Filipino Freethinkers Affiliations Director once a month. (These are just short narrative reports about your own meetups, which we may feature as articles on our site.)
  • Consistently conduct regular meetups.

The essence of Filipino Freethinkers is the meetup. Beyond the activism and the advocacies, the meetup is where freethinkers mingle and foster friendship and camaraderie. However, being a group dedicated to evidence-based discussion, it is important that meetup facilitators and attendees try not to coddle abject nonsense simply because of friendship and averseness to conflicts. The meetup is where we challenge each other’s ideas and come away with new ones. While we understand the value of open-mindedness, there is such a thing as having your mind so open that your brains fall out. It is often the case that the tolerance practiced by freethinkers is hijacked and abused by those not as willing to be constrained by facts.

So, how do we determine what is nonsense and what is not? So far, the best humans have come up with is the method of science and arguing from evidence. It is this curiosity tempered by skepticism that Filipino Freethinkers wishes to be a common trait in all meetups wherever a member decides to attend.

If you want to set up your own chapter, email our Affiliations Director, Garrick Bercero at [email protected]. Send us a short background on yourself, your local area, some of the members who will be helping you out in conducting meetups, and why you want to start up a chapter. We also ask that you send a short 500 word essay on freethinking, so that we can assess if your affiliation will be a good fit with Filipino Freethinkers.

Filipino Freethinkers reserves the right to choose which activities it will lend its name to. Affiliations are non-binding and may be terminated by either party at any time.

Campus Chapters

There is an old Jesuit saying that goes, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” The motto encapsulates the prime motivation of Catholic academic institutions in our country—indoctrination early on in life lasts. College is often the only place that allows the youth the freedom to abandon their religious conditioning and explore new ideas and challenge old ones.

Filipino Freethinkers understands the importance of universities in the formation of the philosophies and ideologies of the youth, which is why we are excited whenever freethinking students of universities come to us regarding establishing their own Filipino Freethinkers University Chapters. College is hard enough and being the sole doubter of religious dogma in a classroom sure doesn’t help. We’d like to fix that and get freethinkers in schools in touch with each other and build their own freethinking communities.

If your school does not yet have an FF university chapter and you would like to help found one, we have the following affiliation guidelines for organizations looking to use the Filipino Freethinkers name and our resources. We ask students interested in setting up University Chapters to clue us in on what the situation is for freethinkers in their campus. We’d love to hear your stories.

A Filipino Freethinkers University Chapter must:

  • Promote reason, science, and secularism.
  • Be consistent with the mission and vision of Filipino Freethinkers.
  • Be civil rights-minded and non-discriminatory.
  • Be comprised of enrolled students in the respective university.
  • Have at least four officers forming an executive committee.
  • Have at least one faculty adviser, preferably. (Depending on the composition of a school’s faculty, this may prove difficult for many school chapters. We will assess the situation on a case-to-case basis.)
  • Prepare monthly or per meeting reports, whichever is less often. (These are just short narrative reports about your own meetups, which we may feature as articles on our site.)
  • Have at least two members to personally meet with the Filipino Freethinkers Affiliations Director, or their representative, at least twice per term. If the location of a university makes this inconvenient, online meetings may suffice.
  • Have a Chapter Constitution, to be submitted for review and approval. You may pattern yours out of the UP Diliman Chapter’s.
  • Be university recognized/registered, preferably. (We understand that this is often impossible, especially for students in Catholic schools. Because of this, there will be some leeway regarding this rule.)

We are always looking for partners in setting up FF university affiliates. We currently have three university registered chapters in UP DilimanUP Manila, and UP Los Baños. We have informal groups in De La Salle University as well as in Ateneo de Manila University. If you would like to join an existing university chapter or contact us to start one, you can get in touch with our Affiliations Director, Garrick Bercero at [email protected].

Help us make our schools reasonable and freethinker-friendly.