The Way To Happiness

THE WAY TO HAPPINESS Home Page

The Way to Happiness is a grassroots program that offers the community the non-religious moral code developed by L. Ron Hubbard. It is a separate and autonomous charitable program that operates independently of the churches of Scientology. It is supported by Scientologists and other people of good will.

The Way to Happiness campaign is helping to create a planet where trust, honesty and goodwill are the order of the day. The state of the planet is a far cry from this ideal scene, and thus it is vital that The Way to Happiness be put into broad use.

If you would like to get this book in use in your community:

Or call The Way to Happiness Foundation International
1-800-815-0242
Or e-mail: info@twth.org

LANGUAGES THE WAY TO HAPPINESS HAS BEEN TRANSLATED INTO
1. AFRIKAANS
2. ALBANIAN
3. ARABIC
4. BOSNIAN
5. BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
6. BULGARIAN
7. CROATIAN
8. CZECH
9. DANISH
10. DUTCH
11. ENGLISH
12. FARSI
13. FINNISH
14. FRENCH
15. GERMAN
16. GREEK
17. HEBREW
18. HINDI
19. HUNGARIAN
20. INDONESIAN
21. ITALIAN
22. JAPANESE
23. KANNADA
24. LITHUANIAN
25. MACEDONIAN
26. NORWEGIAN
27. POLISH
28. PORTUGUESE
29. PUNJABI
30. RUSSIAN
31. SERBIAN
32. SLOVAK
33. SLOVENIAN
34. SPANISH
35. SWEDISH
36. TAIWANESE
37. THAI
38. URDU
39. VIETNAMESE
40. XHOSA
41. ZULU

If you would like to get this book in use in your community:
Call The Way to Happiness Foundation
1-800-815-0242
Or e-mail: twthfoundation@thewaytohappiness.org

Opening the Road to Self-Esteem and Standards for School Children
A major concern of The Way To Happiness International is to help school-age children develop their own standards for right and wrong conduct, standards by which they themselves can guide their lives and chart their futures. This is accomplished most notably through three programs:

The Youth Essay Contest sponsored by The Way To Happiness International reaches approximately 90,000 students annually, primarily in the United States. Entrants are challenged to write essays based on the booklet’s precepts, gaining the opportunity to try out new values and learn how they fit their lives.

Here is what a nine-year old student wrote:

“Good examples can be set in different ways.... You can teach a younger brother or sister to make friends and that you care. You can teach them by talking to them if they have any problems or comforting them when they are scared. Setting a good example also means always trying to do the right thing because whatever you do to everyone else, the little kids will want to do the same thing.”

Approximately 1,500 schools participate annually in a sister contest, the Youth Poster Contest. Here students design posters to illustrate the importance of the precepts of The Way to Happiness.

The largest Way to Happiness contest is the Set A Good Example Contest, sponsored by the Concerned Businessmen of America Association. This program has reached into more than 10,600 schools, contacting over 12 million students. Classes work out projects putting into use the precepts of the booklet. Whether the project entails cleaning up litter on a beach or roadway, running a bake sale for a local hospital, or helping siblings and parents, the children learn the satisfaction of helping and working positively with others.

An independent study surveyed some of the teachers and students who participated in one of these campaigns and found:

63% of the teachers who signed up for the contest and 85% of those submitting a project for judging noticed a positive change in their students’ understanding of moral values.

61% of teachers who signed up and 90% of teachers submitting a project noticed a positive change in their students’ attitudes.

85% of the students reported that they learned something from The Way to Happiness booklet. This included learning the importance of manners, of treating others with respect, of taking responsibility for their actions and of being competent.

If you would like to get this book in use in your community:
Call The Way to Happiness Foundation
1-800-815-0242
Or e-mail: twthfoundation@thewaytohappiness.org

The positive impact of the program crosses cultures and life situations. For example, more than three hundred 6th to 12th grade students at the youth-at-risk Harlendale Alternative Center near San Antonio, Texas, have used The Way to Happiness as an integral part of their program. The results are described here by one of the center’s counselors, Naida Segura:

“Although these children come from very difficult situations, once they have been exposed to The Way to Happiness, they are able to make good choices. ... It gives the children enough understanding to overcome peer pressure and environment or familial situations that would have them otherwise make the wrong decisions.”

And the headmaster of a Tel Aviv school described the results which The Way to Happiness achieved with his children: “You can take credit for the fact that since you have done the program for the 4th grade children, there is no violence in the 4th grade classes. There was no fighting, no violence and no trouble, a complete reverse of what had been occurring before!”

“We have decreased the violence by 70%-80% over the school year. We have decreased disrespectful attitudes toward teachers, decreased vulgar language and gestures.

“Kids are now more apt to sit down, calm down, think about what to do and set a good example. It’s not 100% but it’s 100% improvement.”
Vanessa Barbour, Principal
Lockeland Middle School

“As a parent and citizen I share your concern about the current state of society. Crime, violence in schools and the general lack of moral values are not creating a safe environment for our families and ourselves. The good news is that something is being done to change these conditions. That is why I am pleased to support The Way to Happiness campaign and the Set a Good Example contest, which is helping combat moral decline in our society.

“With this campaign, we can prevent crime before it begins by effectively teaching children right from wrong — at home, at school and in the community.

“I use The Way to Happiness booklet with my family, friends and colleagues and I invite you to do the same!”
Nancy Cartwright
Actress and voice of TV’s Bart Simpson

Essay from a student, age 15:
“ There is a place where violence is commonplace and expected much as unpleasant weather. Where nothing is thought of armed robbery. Where narcotics and hallucinogens are sold like newspapers. Where the only safe haven can be found in alliance with a group of armed and hardened people who are forever defending and conspiring against other affiliations. Where brutal crimes are punished by temporary confinement measured in hours, or black marks on one’s record, or not at all. This fence- and metal detector encircled institution is the high school. In this environment, the individual student is liable to fall back to very primitive philosophies to survive, in place of the morals that were never taught. The government’s solution is to build vandal-proof drinking fountains. We must bring students the morals in The Way to Happiness. We must bring them today. For without them, the future is dark.”

Helping Teach Right From Wrong
“While no one can guarantee that anyone else can be happy, their chances of survival and happiness can be improved. And with theirs, yours will be.”
L. Ron Hubbard.

The Way to Happiness International is the coordination point for unique grassroots, volunteer-based campaigns to improve the quality of community life for peoples around the world: It runs programs for school children of all ages, provides succor to victims of natural disasters, and offers the restoration of compassionate and tolerant values for community survival to people in areas torn by war, civil and ethnic strife, and terrorism. With ABLE’s help, The Way to Happiness International offers standards through which our children can reach a positive adulthood and which all individuals can use to increase their own abilities to live satisfying lives.

The origins of this program go back to 1980 when L. Ron Hubbard noted the rapid decline in community moral standards and wrote: “Reading the papers and wandering around in the society, it was pretty obvious that honesty and truth were not being held up to the standards they once had. People and even little kids in schools have gotten the idea that high moral standards are a thing of the past.”

In response to this situation, he compiled a non-religious moral code grounded fully in common sense, The Way to Happiness.

Since the booklet first appeared in 1981, more than 60,000,000 copies have been published in 41 languages and distributed in more than 94 countries. As it is non-religious and based on compelling logic, the booklet is able to reach people in diverse cultures and settings. Indeed, its uses are so many it is possible here to mention only some of the most prominent.

“The goals, and the patterns, and the methods of The Way to Happiness seem to me to be about as dramatic a response to the prayers of the forefathers as could possibly be contrived... Methodic faceted ways to improve the moral, the physical, the intellectual aspects of the culture in which we live.”
Alex Haley
Author of Roots

“My whole family was involved in gangs, so I grew up with this kind of life. I had gone to prison and had lost hope. Then I read The Way to Happiness. I had never looked at the illegal things I had done, and realized that some of the things I did that I thought were right were really wrong. I thought it was okay to put people down. Now I see that if you do good things for people it will come back to you. This book brought me hope.”
J.P.

The Way to Happiness in the World’s Trouble Spots

An unfortunate hallmark of recent decades has been a worldwide rise in ethnic and religious violence, conflict and war. Ranging from tribal conflicts in Africa, to the religious hostilities of the Balkan area, from racism and discrimination in the Western world to acts of international terror committed on an unprecedented scale, our communities have been repeatedly torn apart and the lives of our children and families ravaged by tragic and horrifying acts of malice.

Underlying these hostilities is the fundamental fact that on the level of the individual, man does not practice tolerance of diversity nor seek to understand and live with his neighbor. Far too often he deals with his fellows as stereotypes or objects of unreasoning hatred. The Way to Happiness undercuts this and helps a person see his neighbor as another human being, worthy of respect and decent treatment as a unique individual.

In response to this need—and to succor communities ravaged by such violence—The Way To Happiness International organizes, prints and gets distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of the booklet. For example, tens of thousands of copies were distributed in New York City immediately following the terrorist disaster of September 11; more than 1,000,000 copies were distributed in Los Angeles to assist the healing of the community after the riots of 1992; and thousands of booklets were distributed in communities such as Littleton, Colorado after traumatic events such as schoolroom shootings. Widespread use of the booklet has followed dislocations and upsets due to natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.

Outside of the United States, The Way To Happiness International has arranged similar distribution programs in response to regional problems. In 1993 some 800,000 copies of the booklet were distributed in South Africa to ease the turbulent governmental transition at the end of the apartheid era. International observers had anticipated that the elections would be marked by violence and, indeed, it was the continued small outbreaks of inter-tribal violence which led The Way To Happiness International to undertake the distribution action. Yet once the booklets were out and the election held, to great international relief, there was no violence to mar the turnover of power to President Nelson Mandela.

While no one claims The Way to Happiness was the sole reason for this peace, it is undeniable that it was a factor and that this was precisely the product which the distribution sought to achieve. In other situations of conflict and hostility the booklet has been distributed to help people achieve a better life. In the late 1980s approximately 2,000,000 copies were distributed in Colombia to assuage the rampant violence in that country. Police were trained on the principles in the booklet and distributed it directly to the communities that they served. In 1994, 100,000 copies of the booklet were distributed in Israel following the assassination of President Rabin; and major distributions in Hebrew and Arabic are being carried out to both sides in the current Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

In the face of the conflict which kept the Balkans in turmoil and war throughout the early and mid-1990s, The Way To Happiness International supported the distribution of more than 300,000 copies of the booklet. The responses were consistently favorable, with recognition that the principles in the booklet provide a way out of the centuries-old conflict.

“I want to give my sincere thanks for the seminars given to the 180 police officers covering the 21 precepts of ethics and morals from The Way to Happiness book. These seminars have given us a good lesson and an understanding of the importance of being a police officer—which means setting a good example for the community and society.”
Commander of the Metropolitan Police, Bogota, Colombia

“I am a Vietnam veteran. In Overtown, a predominantly black, lower income area of Miami with a high crime rate, we had many teenagers hanging out on the street corners, and one large housing project where the police were a regular feature, every day. When I sat in on a few The Way to Happiness Club meetings, I knew that The Way to Happiness could help my community, so I took some to pass out to the teenagers and to the entire housing project.

“After I had handed out more than one thousand booklets, I noticed some positive changes, like the police were not coming around every day and I didn’t see the teenagers hanging out on the street corner like they used to. Then, last week, the Miami Herald had this headline:
OVERTOWN CRIME RATE DOWN — ECONOMY UP.”
R.G.

“Your interest and care for the welfare of the taxi drivers and their passengers is very much appreciated. We see The Way to Happiness as a solution to the violence that is currently on-going in our industry. After reading the book we realised that this is the exact tool we need to give the taxi drivers a commonsense guide to a safer existence for themselves and their passengers. As this booklet is non-religious and non-political it is acceptable by all our drivers.”
Temba Mgabhi
National African Taxi Drivers Association, South Africa

The Way to Happiness Community Enhancement Programs
The Way to Happiness is regularly used by individuals who want to help our children and contribute to and improve our communities. There is no “set” way to do this. Projects are as diverse as the imaginations of the people involved. Some of the more popular activities include:

Projects for children focusing on improving personal relationships

Graffiti paint-out projects

Beach, park and highway litter clean-up programs

Distribution of the booklet to business customers

General neighborhood distribution projects

Booklet distribution in gang-ridden areas

The Way To Happiness International has also sponsored a televised campaign of public service announcements on the theme, “Morals—they’re not hard to learn, we just have to teach them.”

The impact of these programs is felt most clearly on an individual level. By speaking directly to the problems which each person faces in his or her life, the results are often life-changing. The common denominator is that people, by their own standards, improve and live happier lives in closer harmony with their fellows.

“I used to be very dishonest. I then read The Way to Happiness. I decided I had to change and make an attempt to be honest in my dealings with others. I stopped the dishonesty. I found I could be honest. I became successful and happy as a result of applying this powerful book.” B.G.

“Our company has participated in reprinting copies of The Way to Happiness for our customers for several years now.

“We’ve had a successful business for years, but including The Way to Happiness as part of our business has made a huge difference in the way our employees feel about their work and the way our customers view us. They know we care about improving the quality of their lives.

“We feel we are contributing to a much brighter future for not only ourselves and our immediate families, but future generations.” Bob Sullivan

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