Church of Scientology Amsterdam Sponsors 2nd Annual Anti-Drug Marathon

Former drug addicts carry out 350 km (217 mile) run to raise awareness on the danger of drugs

Volunteers from the Church of Scientology of Amsterdam joined former addicts in a two-week 350 km (217 mile) anti-drug marathon through Holland to raise awareness of the dangers of drugs. The team kicked off their cross-country journey August 2 in the town of Den Helder with the mayor joining them for the first kilometer of the run.

Along the route, the runners are distributing booklets and flyers presenting factual information on the effects of drugs. The former addicts on the team know all too well the damage drugs cause—how drugs can lead to stealing, prostitution and other criminal activities. They also have firsthand knowledge of longterm physical, emotional and mental consequences of using drugs.

"It all seems so innocent at first," says one of the former addicts, "but if I had known how drugs would destroy my life I would absolutely never have started. If I can prevent even one youth from suffering the horrors of addiction through this marathon, then I'm happy."

According to a recent study, there is twice as much cannabis use among Netherland teens age 15-16 as the European average. The purpose of the marathon, co-sponsored by the Say No to Drugs—Say Yes to Life Foundation, the Church of Scientology, and Narconon, is to decrease teen drug use by raising awareness of the dangers of drugs.

For more information on the drug education and prevention initiative of the Church of Scientology, visit www.Scientology.org.

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The Church of Scientology sponsors the world's largest nongovernmental drug education and prevention campaign. It has been conclusively proven that when young people are provided with the truth about drugs—factual information on what drugs are and what they do—usage rates drop commensurately.

What do Scientologists do in Society?

Implicit in the Scientology worldview is a mandate to employ the truths of Scientology to uplift Mankind. Consequently, as Scientology grows, so too the humanitarian programs Scientologists support. Those programs now include:

• The world’s largest nongovernmental anti-drug campaign, reaching tens of millions of at-risk youth each year;
• The establishment of drug rehabilitation centers in more than 40 nations;
• The world’s largest nongovernmental human rights public information campaign, broadly promoting the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• Global education programs bringing the gift of literacy to tens of millions of students in America, Europe, Asia and Africa;
• A Way to Happiness movement spanning 135 nations, uplifting populations and restoring the brotherhood of Man.
• The Scientology Volunteer Minister program bringing emergency relief to more than 10 million people at every major disaster site through the last twenty years.

Additionally, through the Citizens Commission on Human Rights Scientologists have further spotlighted and worked to outlaw the enforced drugging of schoolchildren, the psychiatric brutalities of electric shock and lobotomy, and biological warfare experiments.

Finally, the Church was among the original champions of the Freedom of Information Actand other access laws to protect the public interest and end government human rights abuses.

In conclusion, then, the Church of Scientology and Scientologists work in alignment with the Aims of Scientology and the dream of a “civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where Man is free to rise to greater heights.”

Human Rights Education

I love the 30 public service announcement about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that appear on the Scientology website

September 11

Where were you on September 11? Do you remember exactly where you heard the news?

I was on a bus.

I totally missed the import of the event. Someone was really upset and was talking about it. That was before I had a Blackberry, and the woman in question often exaggerated things so I fobbed it off as "she always overdoes it."

Then I found out what it was and --- shock. Utter shock.

I think the whole country blanked out for a day or so.

I thought the world would change because of it. I have to say I am largely disappointed.

My church (Scientology) has changed. We have become much more pro-active, much more involved in the community and much more active in outreach to others. A lot of my friends went to Haiti, for example. And some even went to Japan after the tsunami.

But when I look around in society, I am disappointed that what looked like it would prompt a resurgence in activism and social change stopped dead shortly afterwards.

What is the Church of Scientology?

The Church of Scientology was established in 1954. Today its more than 6,000 churches, missions, related organizations, groups and activities span the globe and minister the religion to more than eight million people in 159 countries in over 66 languages.

The rapid emergence of the Scientology religion within the world’s changing spiritual community has led many to ask what kind of religion it is, how it compares with other faiths and in what ways it is different. What is its understanding of a Supreme Being and the spiritual aspects of life which transcend the temporal world? What social and community work is done by Scientology Church members and how do these activities relate to the greater religious purpose of the Scientology belief?

This volume provides answers to these and other such questions about the Scientology religion and its members. In it, leading scholars provide diverse and insightful perspectives into Scientology, resulting in a unique and comprehensive overview of the religion.

The goal of the Scientology religion is to achieve complete certainty of one's spiritual existence, one's relationship to the Supreme Being, and his role in eternity. In this regard, countless authorities have affirmed that Scientology sits squarely within the tradition of the world's major religions.

Tim Bowles: Idealism in Action

As you read this page, untold millions on five continents are attempting to scratch out a subsistence living, many unsuccessfully, deprived of their basic human rights.

A trip to Africa in 2005 changed Tim Bowles’ life.

“When I arrived in Ghana, it was like coming home,” he says. “I knew I had to do something to help.”

Bowles, an attorney specializing in constitutional law, was in Africa to assist with the Youth for Human Rights International World Tour. Decades of gruesome civil wars have decimated wide regions of sub-Sahara Africa. Of the worst 20 countries in the 2004 Human Development Index, 19 are in Africa.

The wars dismantled the infrastructure, displaced entire villages, and destroyed livelihoods. The result: Widespread poverty and disease.

Bowles was so taken with the youth he met in Africa, and so moved by what they had been through, that he decided to take on the challenge personally.

Dedicated to making a real difference, Bowles returned to the continent the following year to launch a unique initiative. In coordination with a corps of young human rights activists he met there in 2005, each eager to bring about reform in his or her country, he developed the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign, under the banner of Youth for Human Rights. The Campaign has grown to provide young African men and women the training and experience they need to play key roles in creating and sustaining just and prosperous societies over the coming crucial decades.

In friendly competition with each other, teams of high school students generate and conduct public awareness campaigns on human rights abuses they select, based on the articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including human trafficking, access to justice and government corruption. They first learn leadership, organizational and communication skills—including public speaking and videography—to present their points of view effectively. In the course of conducting their campaigns through contact with media, a broad range of public and private sector leaders and the general public, the program enables students to become meaningful participants in their respective nation’s social, political and cultural advancement.

“The many remarkably bright young people with whom I have worked since 2005 are determined not to fall into the patterns of hatred to which many of their elders succumbed,” says Bowles.

Over the past six years, Bowles and his team of Youth for Human Rights program directors in Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone—and more recently Togo and Ethiopia—have trained nearly 700 youth in more than 150 schools, formed over 300 local human rights groups, and educated some 15,000 high school and junior high school students on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and their own responsibility in seeing that these rights are honored.

Bowles’ original decision to enter law followed a trip to India in 1973 where he first confronted the plight of the millions who live in poverty, deprived of human rights. He studied and practiced constitutional law to ensure the rights of others, including his church, were protected.

“I saw law as a helping profession,” says Bowles, “one that would provide knowledge and skills to help improve social conditions and advance worthy causes.”

The African Human Rights Leadership Campaign brings him full circle with this original purpose, as it is a means to improve the lives of millions. By empowering this and future generations with an understanding of their rights and responsibilities, the Campaign seeks to bring peace and prosperity in regions torn by hatred.

In the video From the Ruins: African Human Rights Leadership, Boersen Hinneh, Youth for Human Rights program director for Liberia, expresses the core concept of the program: “It’s about teaching young people about their basic human rights and responsibilities. And that is the key issue—responsibility. When young people have been exposed to so much violence I think there is a need that they learn their basic rights and responsibilities so that when they get older they will know how to treat their fellow citizens, their fellow man, equally.”

A Scientologist since 1975, Bowles says Scientology has enabled him to envision and pursue this purpose.

“I have gained the ability and willingness to confront and deal effectively with enormous challenges,” he says. “It has helped me conceive of doing seemingly impossible things and actually do them. Scientology, by its philosophical foundations, its tools, and the examples it sets through members’ actions, is an inspiration, a support and a means to my achieving my role in civilization’s advance.”

To learn more about what Scientologists are doing to create a better world, watch "Meet a Scientologist" videos at www.Scientology.org.

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The popular “Meet a Scientologist“ profiles on the Church of Scientology International Video Channel at Scientology.org now total more than 200 broadcast-quality documentary videos featuring Scientologists from diverse locations and walks of life. The personal stories are told by Scientologists who are educators, teenagers, skydivers, a golf instructor, a hip-hop dancer, IT manager, stunt pilot, mothers, fathers, dentists, photographers, actors, musicians, fashion designers, engineers, students, business owners and more.

A digital pioneer and leader in the online religious community, in April 2008 the Church of Scientology became the first major religion to launch its own YouTube Video Channel. The Official Scientology YouTube Channel has now been viewed by millions of visitors.

Meet a Scientologist—Al Adriance, Helping People Pick Up the Pieces

The meaning of the word "devastation" was brought home once again to Al Adriance. Although a disaster relief veteran who provided help after the 2007 Greensburg, Kansas, tornado, Adriance was stunned by the destruction he saw in Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) June 29, 2011

Al Adriance will long remember Memorial Day Weekend 2011, not for the celebrations and parties, but for what he confronted in Joplin, Missouri, after the May 23 tornado.

Learning of the disaster, the Kansas Citian left for Joplin the following morning and spent the next 10 days providing relief.

Adriance coordinated the work of a team of some 40 Scientology Volunteer Ministers who converged in Joplin from the Church of Scientology St. Louis and the Church of Scientology Kansas City, Missouri.

"Search and rescue was a monumental task because of the magnitude of the disaster," says Adriance. "So much of the city was destroyed—roofs torn off, cars overturned, entire city blocks leveled. All that was left of one house we saw was a stairwell and a closet. "

They set up their big yellow Volunteer Ministers tent and began providing Scientology assists—procedures developed by L. Ron Hubbard that address the spiritual and emotional effects of trauma, to help people recover from the stress and injury.

"Everyone was under pressure and physical strain. Search and rescue and cleanup activities are physically exhausting and can be extremely draining emotionally," he says. "We delivered Scientology assists to hundreds of people who came through the tent in a steady stream—residents, other volunteers, administrators, caregivers, police and fire fighters. People felt so much better after their assists that the word of mouth spread fast—we were always busy."