"The Philippine National Red Cross introduced The Way to Happiness as a part of their humanitarian mandate. The results have been tangible and significant. These programmes now use The Way to Happiness in all Philippine Red Cross learning centres. Not only are we seeing a mutual respect and a newfound interest in education, but street fighting has become almost non-existent wherever the book and its precepts are used."
— Gregory Smith
Red Cross executive, United States
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Effective campaigns for peace and tolerance
Introduced to The Way to Happiness by major performing artist and Scientologist David Pomeranz, whose fame in the Philippines has made him a singing idol, the Red Cross in that nation embarked upon a project to establish learning centres for the "street children" where The Way to Happiness precepts make up the curriculum and children can learn in virtual safe havens.
After establishing five learning centres, building "The Way to Happiness Playground," and forming a team of health educators, the Red Cross has now taken the next step — publishing tens of thousands of their own customised editions of the book.
Gregory Smith, a Red Cross executive, reported, "The Philippine National Red Cross introduced The Way to Happiness as a part of their humanitarian mandate. The results have been tangible and significant. These programmes now use The Way to Happiness in all Philippine Red Cross learning centres. Not only are we seeing a mutual respect and a newfound interest in education, but street fighting has become almost non-existent wherever the book and its precepts are used."
In the Philippines, it was the Red Cross that first saw the book's potential for changing lives; in Russia, it was the new democracy's military.
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In Russia, within five years of that country's first printing of the Russian-translated book, more than 13 million copies had been distributed nationwide, its text also reprinted in one of the most popular Russian newspapers, Argumenty i Fakty (Arguments and Facts).
Said one reader who wrote to The Way to Happiness Foundation's Moscow offices, "I have read lots of literature about the harmful effects of alcohol and various indulgences, and now I have The Way to Happiness booklet by L. Ron Hubbard. I have been reading it just about every day and as a result I no longer smoke or drink, and my relationships with my wife and four kids totally changed. This book will save our long-suffering people from the trouble that is hanging about us."
The former finance chief of the State Academic Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia also wrote to the Foundation, stating, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart for a wonderful book, The Way to Happiness.... All my friends and I looked over it and read it over and over again with great pleasure.... The messages in the publication are even more important to us, citizens of the former USSR, due to the very difficult period of our life that we are experiencing now. Your book gives us hope for a better future."
