March 13 is L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. Although he died in 1986, his technology and the Scientology religion are his living legacy, as are the many millions that legacy has helped.
Australian Scientologist Peter Dunn has served as a Scientology Volunteer Minister in Haiti, Queensland, and Japan.
At 4 a.m. on March 11, 2011, the shock wave from the magnitude 9 earthquake that triggered a 30-foot tsunami off the northeast coast of Japan reached Australia—not as a physical blast but rather as a summons for Scientologist Peter Dunn to return to Japan and help in her time of need.
Dunn, a native of Adelaide who lives in Sydney, had spent the last few months volunteering in the December 2010 Queensland floods, helping residents of Grantham, the town hardest hit, clean up their homes and neighborhoods.
Having lived in Japan for several years when he served as a staff member at the Church of Scientology of Tokyo, Dunn’s strong affinity for the Japanese people and his sense of duty prompted his departure for Japan.
Described by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan as “the biggest crisis Japan has encountered in the 65 years since the end of World War II," the earthquake and tsunami left more than 20,000 dead or missing, causing an estimated 16.9 trillion yen ($220 billion) in damage and triggering the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Dunn, who also served for several months in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake, described the scene he encountered in Japan as very different from what he experienced in Port-au-Prince. Although the destruction was worse and more widespread than in Haiti, Japan rebounded, able to quickly leverage far more resources in the relief effort.
As is the custom of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers, on arriving in Japan they asked what was needed and wanted and set about providing what was asked. They distributed food and water, worked on the search and rescue operation, and manned shelters. They even arranged bicycle donations so junior high school students could travel over roads still closed to cars and trucks to deliver food and supplies to ill, injured, and elderly residents in and around the city of Kesennuma.
While he was prepared to take on any task needed, Dunn is a Scientology spiritual counselor or auditor—“one who listens,” from the Latin audire, “to hear or listen.” So his main function in Japan was to provide Scientology assists. These are techniques developed by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard that relieve stress and emotional trauma and can speed physical recovery by addressing the spiritual factors in illness and injuries.
“At one shelter, a lady who couldn’t walk when we started rose after a five-minute assist feeling like she wanted to run,” says Dunn. “Another elderly woman was deeply disturbed and told me she expected to die soon. A week later, after daily assists, she had regained her will to live and her enthusiasm and she was bringing life and optimism back to the entire room of 30 survivors in the shelter where she was staying.”
Dunn is proud that in each disaster where he has served, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers have addressed the task at hand with industry, willingness and persistence.
“It has been my honor to help hospital-bound amputees in Haiti, polite and gentle Japanese pensioners in homeless shelters, and rough, tough Aussie farmers,” says Dunn. “And each of them know by our actions that we have simply come to help.”
Introduced to Scientology in 1974 when a friend gave him a copy of Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought by L. Ron Hubbard, Dunn, now 61, found answers he’d long sought about the meaning and purpose of life. What he appreciates most from what he has gained in four decades as a Scientologist is the ability and opportunity to help.
The Scientology Volunteer Minister program was initiated by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1976. There are now hundreds of thousands of people trained in the skills of a Volunteer Minister across 185 nations.
News about the Scientology Volunteer Minister at Blog.VolunteerMinisters.Org!
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers (VMs) are the help force of the Church of Scientology, founded by Scientology-founder L. Ron Hubbard in the 1970s:
"A Volunteer Minister is a person who helps his fellow man on a volunteer basis by restoring purpose, truth and spiritual values to the lives of others."— L. Ron Hubbard
VMs are trained in disaster response techniques but also in general administration and to give help to others in all situations in life. They VMs exist since the 1970s but after a "Wake Up Call" triggered off by the 9/11 terror acts they now number more than 203,000 all over the world. VMs are regularly despatched to disaster zones to give help, hundreds of thousands of man hours since 2001. They proudly call themselves the biggest disaster relief force on earth and I believe they are. Every VM is a volunteer who quits his or her job for several days, weeks or even months to help others in need.
Scientology Volunteer Ministers live by the motto:SomethingCanBe Done About It."
Scientology Volunteer Minister Returns to Haiti to Train Local First Responders
Volunteer Minister Ayal Lindeman just returned to Spring Valley, New York, after training 100 community-based first responders in Haiti in the fundamentals of first aid, search and rescue techniques, simple solutions to contaminated drinking water, and basic Scientology assists, technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard that speed recovery by addressing the emotional and spiritual factors in illness and injury.
Lindeman, an LPN and 20-year veteran EMT who was a pivotal part of the initial Scientology Haiti Disaster Response, has continued his personal involvement in the recovery of the country by working closely with Haitian-American groups in the United States and by return visits to Haiti to coordinate activities and provide training.>>
A series of Volunteer Ministers Seminars Help More Than 5,000 in Bushenyi, Uganda
This story from the Scientology Volunteer Ministers blog really caught my eye:
At the request of educators in the Bushenyi District of southwest Uganda, in May 2011 a team of Kampala-based Scientology Volunteer Ministers led by Mr. Pedaiah Paul M. Teba, Director of the World Light Caring Mission of Uganda, traveled the 200 miles from the nation’s capital to provide a series of seminars. >>
“If one does not like the crime, cruelty, injustice and violence of this society, he can do something about it. He can become a VOLUNTEER MINISTER and help civilize it, bring it conscience and kindness and love and freedom from travail by instilling into it trust, decency, honesty and tolerance.”
— L. Ron Hubbard RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE IN SOCIETY
Role of the Volunteer Minister
The last decade has been one of the most turbulent in our history. Opposing ideologies, violent revolutions and a frail social economic structure have subjected more than one-third of the world’s population to oppression, poverty and brutal human rights violations. Terrorism and a global economic crisis rips at the very fabric of society, propagating a mindset governed by hysteria, fear and anxiety.
However, emotional stress doesn’t halt at the borders of war-ravaged nations. Right at home the epidemics multiply—from drug abuse, delinquency and broken homes, to illiteracy, unemployment and the stress attendant to these problems. Under these conditions, civic administrators and human services personnel bear a tremendous burden.
But there are answers—real ones that work—delivered by Volunteer Ministers whenever and wherever needed with remarkable results. These answers come from the greater body of Scientology technology by L. Ron Hubbard and are intended for people of all beliefs.
Over 200,000 strong and spanning every continent of Earth, Volunteer Ministers work directly with community leaders, officials, support personnel and citizens to bring order and real help no matter the situation.
The Volunteer Ministers also reach out with traveling Cavalcades, bringing their help into major cities and communities throughout the world. Visiting a new city each month, these Cavalcades contact thousands at a time.
Inside the familiar yellow tents, anyone can get one-on-one assistance to address whatever troubles they might be facing.
While beyond their daily work in addressing societal ills, the Volunteer Ministers are among the first to arrive when disaster strikes. Trained to respond to emergency situations, they provide whatever is needed to immediately alleviate suffering and bring order quickly. And because the technology they apply is simple and effective, they quickly train others so they too can provide help.
With their organizational skills and ability to bring order, as well as their effective help to victims and emergency personnel, thousands have joined their ranks and Volunteer Ministers have emerged as one of the largest independent relief forces on Earth.
They have also become a global force delivering effective solutions in disaster zones that don’t make the headlines: in homes and schoolrooms, businesses and neighborhoods. They are on call on a 24/7 international Volunteer Minister Hotline.
Anyone, of any belief, who wants to do something to improve conditions around them may become a Volunteer Minister by learning the simple techniques offered by the free courses on this site. Equipped with these solutions, a Volunteer Minister can help build a better world by restoring order, kindness and decency wherever needed.
In answer to escalating crime and violence through the latter 1960s and early 1970s, L. Ron Hubbard founded the Volunteer Minister program. It was designed to provide practical tools for engendering understanding and compassion. Moreover, those tools were expressly conceived for use by Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike. Thus was born a broad-based movement of individuals from all walks of life dedicated to providing on-site assistance to communities around the world.
Through the last 30 years, Scientology Volunteer Ministers have provided aid and emergency services at more than 128 worst-case disaster sites. Today, they are among the world’s most recognized independent relief organizations, and have trained tens of thousands of new volunteers on their methods of bringing help in the worst of times and conditions.
As L. Ron Hubbard wrote, "A Scientology Volunteer Minister is a person who helps his fellow man on a volunteer basis by helping restore purpose, truth and spiritual values to the lives of others. A Scientology Volunteer Minister does not shut his eyes to the pain, evil and injustice of existence."
Volunteer Ministers live by the motto that “Something can be done about it.”
Scientology Volunteer Ministers described on the new Scientology Newsroom site!
There's a new Scientology Newsroom site at www.scientologynews.org Lots of great data, and this description of the VM program:
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers Corps is an embracive program of the Church of Scientology to provide community service, disaster relief and emergency response. Created more than 30 years ago by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, the program has expanded to over 200,000 Volunteer Ministers worldwide who have served at 187 disaster sites, including Ground Zero after 9/11, the Southeast Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and Haiti.
Volunteer Ministers have trained and partnered with more than 1,000 different groups, organizations and agencies including the Red Cross, FEMA, the National Guard, and police and fire departments. The Volunteer Ministers Corps motto is “Something can be done about it.”
In addition to assisting people in need in their own communities, Scientology Volunteer Ministers have helped hundreds of thousands in major cities around the world and in far flung outposts. Our 18 Continental Volunteer Minister traveling centers (marquee yellow tents) and have toured through 170 countries covering over 300,000 miles, including a Volunteer Ministers barge traveling on the Amazon River, two centers traveling throughout Western and Central Africa and a traveling center in the outback of Australia.
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers also routinely work side by side with other emergency response and relief organizations helping to save lives and bring order to disaster zones.
In 2001, more than 800 VMs responded to the World Trade Center disaster and provided spiritual and practical aid to emergency workers for many weeks. They have also been an integral part of rescue and salvage efforts at the sites of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and fires.
More than 500 VMs from 11 nations served in relief efforts in Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka in 2005 after the Tsunami. Their work was reported on by international media including CNN, The Economist, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The service of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers has been recognized by politicians, police, military, other relief agencies and civic authorities. A mayor in Louisiana whose city had been hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 said, “I was very happy when more than 900 of your Church Volunteer Ministers arrived in my city from all over the world and became a major force in bringing physical and spiritual help to those in need.”
At the end of June the 22nd anniversary of the maiden voyage of the Freewinds will be celebrated aboard the ship.
After the event is held, videos of each of the four main nights are broadcast at events throughout the summer at Scientology Churches and Missions around the world. They contain important briefings by David Miscavige on what is going on in Scientology today, and what we can expect over the coming year.
Each year for the past several years, this has including briefings on the work of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers, and I'm sure this year will be no exception.
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers program, which was created by L. Ron Hubbard in the 70s, has really taken off.
At the Volunteer Ministers blog you can get up to date on the work of the VMs in Haiti. What they have done there has literally saved lives.
Scientology Volunteer Ministers arrived in Haiti the first week after the earthquake in January, but new volunteers continue to arrive, and they are training Haitians in and around Port-au-Prince in Scientology technology who in turn are opening new groups all around the island.
The Church also sent a ship down with supplies, and this shows the arrival of the ship in P.A.P., being unloaded by a team of Scientologist VMs from about 15 nations including 100 Haitian nationals.
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers program was developed in 1976 by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard. In the wake of 9/11, David Miscavige greatly expanded the scope of the program, which now includes Goodwill Tours throughout the world.
VOLUNTEER MINISTERS PROVIDING EFFECTIVE HELP ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE
In answer to escalating crime and violence through the latter 1960s and early 1970s, L. Ron Hubbard founded the Volunteer Minister program. It was designed to provide practical tools for engendering understanding and compassion. Moreover, those tools were expressly conceived for use by Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike. Thus was born a broad-based movement of individuals from all walks of life dedicated to providing on-site assistance to communities around the world.
Through the last 30 years, Scientology Volunteer Ministers have provided aid and emergency services at more than 128 worst-case disaster sites. Today, they are among the world’s most recognized independent relief organizations, and have trained tens of thousands of new volunteers on their methods of bringing help in the worst of times and conditions.
As L. Ron Hubbard wrote, "A Scientology Volunteer Minister is a person who helps his fellow man on a volunteer basis by helping restore purpose, truth and spiritual values to the lives of others. A Scientology Volunteer Minister does not shut his eyes to the pain, evil and injustice of existence."
Volunteer Ministers live by the motto that “Something can be done about it.”
Scientology Volunteer Minister, Home from Haiti, Says More Help is Needed
Scientology Volunteer Minister David Dempster, a Scotsman who has lived in Clearwater, Florida for the past four years, was on the first Scientology-sponsored charter flight to Haiti on January 16, departing from JFK Airport in New York. The aircraft transported more than 100 doctors, nurses and EMTs (emergency medical technicians) to Haiti, and a team of Volunteer Ministers to support them in their work. Five more flights sponsored by Scientologists have provided transport for over 600 medical and support personnel on donated planes from New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Dempster, who provided urgently needed administrative backup to doctors at two Port-au-Prince hospitals, is back in Florida now, and reflects on his experiences there.
Dempster was first deployed to General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. “On our drive to the hospital, the physical destruction we saw was staggering,” he said. “A local resident told me most buildings are made of concrete blocks to safeguard against hurricane damage, but this served them badly in the quake. The damage was exacerbated by the common practice of mixing extra sand in the concrete to save money. Because of this, the walls just crumbled in the earthquake.”
At General Hospital, Dempster’s team provided administrative backup to the doctors and nurses on duty. “Our Volunteer Ministers organized incoming medical supplies, helped calm distressed patients, distributed water to patients, carried stretchers, helped deliver babies and assisted with amputations, of which there were many,” he said.
“We had a team of four or five Volunteer Ministers assisting the doctor who ran the Intensive Care Unit during the day and two Volunteer Ministers who took on overnight duty. This made an enormous difference in the quality of patient care.”
Dempster also worked at the University of Miami tent hospital. Medical staff had arrived in Haiti, but with no administrative personnel to support them. This tied up the doctors, nurses and EMTs in administrative and logistics functions, drastically cutting into their patient care. To free up the doctors and nurses, the Volunteer Ministers took over myriad administrative support functions.
Organization of medical supplies was the first critical need. Donated supplies had been dropped off, unsorted and unlabeled, forming mountains of boxes, and the scene was consuming precious hours of doctors’ and nurses’ time trying to find a particular medication, a clamp or a syringe. The Volunteer Ministers attacked the disarray of the supply tent, sorting and stacking, organizing and labeling, and setting up a distribution line to get needed items to medical personnel rapidly. This handling of the supply tent by the Scientology Volunteer Ministers enabled the doctors and nurses to spend their time treating patients, with many lives saved as a direct result.
Another area of enormous need was the organizing and running of triage—registering incoming patients, giving them wristband IDs, and noting their visible injuries so doctors and nurses could more rapidly assess priorities. Dempster was put in charge of the Volunteer Ministers in this area, replacing a nurse who had been doing this. “She was very relieved to be able to get on with actual nursing duties,” he said, “while we Volunteer Ministers took care of administrative and logistics matters.”
Back in Florida, Dempster says the work still to be done is massive and he encourages others to volunteer.
Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Haiti - The Week in Review
This past week the first Volunteer Minister teams from Mexico, Russia and the United Kingdom arrived and replaced some of the American volunteer units who had been there for the last three weeks.
In total more than 12,200 people were reached with help this week, including 4,674 served with food and water, and care given to about 2,300 injured people. Several examples follow.
Remote Areas
A team of 7 people (2 Doctors and 5 Scientology Volunteer Ministers) went out several times this week visiting outlying refugee camps in a very torn down neighborhood where people are living in broken houses.
Second unit is making food and supply runs. After receiving a distress call from a local pastor who had told the Volunteers that there were people starving in his community set up a makeshift primary care station and delivered food and water to his camp. The station was been set up outside due to buildings being so unstable. Primary care was given to 70 patients and 96 hot meals, 2 boxes of rice, 100 granola bars, 20 cans of tuna, (enough to feed 200 people) and 4 cases of water were provided. The locals also supplied a list of other areas that desperately needed food and these are being visited in the coming week.
Another Volunteer unit delivered medical assistance to several tent cities outside Port-au-Prince to 495 people. They handed out baby wipes, baby food, powdered milk, vitamins, soap, shampoo, toothpaste and facemasks and delivered a seminar on hygiene.
On Wednesday the Volunteers unit delivering medical supplies went with a Trauma Doctor and Trauma Registered Nurse out "into the trenches." On this project several dozen injured people were located and given proper medical assistance.
The Volunteers helped fly 4 plane loads of medical supplies (approximately 200lbs) to Jacmel in south Haiti and provided them to local doctors that that had been cut off medical supply and support lines. They also helped organize distribution logistics for future deliveries. 30 boxes of MREs (360 Meals Ready to Eat) plus one pallet of rice (enough for 540 people) were deliverd to a nearby community and several kitchens rebuilt to service about 1,000 people.
Hospital installations:
SWISS HOSPITAL TENT: A sanitation team that came in with one of the Volunteer Ministers charter flights has taken on trash clean-up around the hospital. They also organized the draining of a waste-filled pond right next to the hospital tents.
GENERAL HOSPITAL, PORT-AU-PRINCE: A team of Volunteers continued to help distributing food and water to the patients daily and organized the receipt and distribution of needed supplies.
MIAMI UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL TENT: The Volunteer Ministers worked the food distribution lines and continued to put order in the medical storage. They also got local Haitians on board to arrange food deliveries to nearby camps and brought 13 large boxes of food into different communities.
CAMPS IN PORT-AU-PRINCE: For several weeks now Scientology Volunteer Ministers have been arranging food and other supplies for hundreds of children in Port-au-Prince. The Volunteer Ministers continue to feed and care for the children, while professional Haitian orphanage administrators are working to find parents or other relatives. In the past week over a ton of food, water and medical supplies were gotten out to three children camps and several new tents were installed. A van full of school supplies including proper clothing for the kids arrived from Dominican Republic as organized by the Volunteer Minister unit there.
For several weeks Scientology Volunteer Ministers have been arranging food and other supplies for dozens of children in Port-au-Prince. The Volunteer Ministers continue to feed and care for the children, while professional Haitian orphanage administrators are working to find parents or other relatives.
Receipt of donated shelter boxes (tents).
Volunteer Ministers in Haiti provide any assistance needed and to date have helped more than 41,000 people.
Volunteer Minister vans and rented vehicles bring food and supplies to tent cities and refugee camps in southern Haiti.
A typical "tent city" in Haiti's country side where refugees gather.
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers who flew to Pisco to help in the aftermath of last month's earthquake did such a good job there. The administrative technology covered in the Scientology Handbook by L. Ron Hubbard is of enormous help in these kinds of situations. When the local infrastructure breaks down and people are not only confronted by the loss of their homes, their friends and family members, their livelihoods, their possessions and on top of that they are living in shelters with limited food and water and no privacy, it is a real help to have people who know how to organize the place, how to administer basic trauma relief, and how to put people to work, cleaning, serving and helping one another.
The team of VMs in Pisco included several veterans of other disasters and they were able to simply step in and take control of the shelters in Pisco, the town hardest hit by the earthquake.
This photo shows two of the VMs administering Scientology assists to emergency relief personnel.
In a recent international Scientology event David Miscavige described Volunteer Ministers as people who give unconditional help. It's really true, and Pisco was a real example of this.
I just had the opportunity to speak to two of the volunteers who left within 2 days of the disaster and only returned home this week. They both described the month they were in Peru as one of the most incredible experiences of their lives. They were getting hardly any sleep; they were living in the same terrible conditions that the victims of the disaster were living in; they experienced the death and loss firsthand. But the fact that they were able to really help people will remain with them the rest of their lives as one of the most important things they have ever done.
