Israeli Scientologists Work Through the Second Lockdown to Serve Those in Need

When Israel called a second lockdown mid-October as COVID-19 cases surged, volunteers from the Scientology Center of Israel stepped up to help.

Calls continue coming in from charities to the Center of Scientology Israel asking for help. And the answer is always yes.

“Can you help distribute 50 boxes of food to needy families?” Sure. Four teams of Scientologists arrive to pick up the food and head off to deliver it to those in need. 

An ultra-Orthodox charity collects food from a kosher restaurant each week to deliver to needy families, but one recent Friday afternoon they contact the Center. Can you help? Of course. Two volunteers pull up just in time to collect the food and get it to five families before the Sabbath begins. “You are the best,” was the message from the charity. “May we always have a chance to make a difference.” 

Another team delivers soup to a Pentecostal Church in a Ghanaian community in South Tel Aviv. Others distribute large fruit baskets to 25 corona-stricken isolated families around the city. 

 

Yet another team responds to the needs of an elderly man whose apartment burned down. They join volunteers from a municipality youth group and clean and completely renovate his home, paint it and set it up with furniture. “Thank you very much for the help,” writes the coordinator of the project. “Yesterday we gave the key to the apartment to Manesheh and he was very grateful for the help of all the volunteers.”

The Israeli volunteers are part of the international Scientology Volunteer Ministers program, a religious social service created in the mid-1970s by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard. It constitutes one of the world’s largest independent relief forces. A Volunteer Minister’s mandate is to be “a person who helps his fellow man on a volunteer basis by restoring purpose, truth and spiritual values to the lives of others.”

Scientology ecclesiastical leader Mr. David Miscavige has inspired an enormous expansion of the program—a broad-based movement of individuals from all walks of life who dedicate themselves to delivering on-site assistance to communities around the world in times of need. Today, it comprises an independent relief organization with over 200,000 Volunteer Ministers on call internationally.