Displaying forumstats in a sidebar block

[WorldCraft]

Hello. I'm trying to move the Forum Statistics from What's Going On into a forum block. I read that it was possible to put the code in a template, and then just register the template in a PHP block. I'm there, but how to I access the variables in the template?

Here's my code

Created new template called 'forumhome_forumstats'

<dl>
	<dt>{vb:rawphrase threads}</dt>
		<dd>{vb:raw totalthreads}</dd><br />
	<dt>{vb:rawphrase posts}</dt>
		<dd>{vb:raw totalposts}</dd><br />
	<dt>{vb:rawphrase members}</dt>
		<dd>{vb:raw numbermembers}</dd><br />
	<vb:if condition="$show['activemembers']">
		<dt>{vb:rawphrase active_members}</dt>
		<dd>{vb:raw activemembers}</dd>
	</vb:if>
</dl>

Created new PHP block

$templater = vB_Template::create('forumhome_forumstats');

$output = $templater->render();
return $output;

As expected it will display the HTML properly, but not the template variables. How can I access them? I'm new to using the $templater and am a bit stuck.

Thank you