Members of the Church of Scientology of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, help bring police and local residents together through a unique booklet.

Some 500 households in the village of Wittedrift in the South Africa province of Western Cape were visited by police October 14—but not to investigate a crime or apprehend wrongdoers. Rather, Plettenberg Bay police and members of the Church of Scientology of Port Elizabeth carried out a project to reduce crime through focusing on moral values by distributing copies of The Way to Happiness in Afrikaans to local residents.

The Way to Happiness is a nonreligious moral code based entirely on common sense, written by author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard and fills a moral void in an increasingly immoral society.

The drive went a long way to bring together the police and local community, said one of the volunteers. “One policeman told me that whenever he drove through this township he felt sad, and that the October 14 event changed that feeling for the first time. The policeman felt that handing out the booklets gave him a tool to do something constructive for the community—and that felt good.”

“The issue of course is the dire need for knowledge,” said the police colonel who organized the project. “However, I stress that it is up to the community to make good choices after reading the book and understanding its principles. The Way to Happiness Foundation is giving us as police members the opportunity to experience first-hand the challenges people face. Besides merely handing out the books, we hear their concerns regarding crime. So I feel very fortunate to say that, during this process, we also received a lot of information that is valuable to us in terms of planning the way forward.”

In August, Plettenburg SAPS (South African Police Service) also began distributing copies of The Way to Happiness booklets to Plettenberg Bay secondary school students, and the Plettenberg Bay Police station has copies of the booklet available to anyone who wishes to obtain information on the program.

The Way to Happiness was written in 1981. Immensely popular since its first publication, more than 109 million copies have been distributed in 111 languages in 209 countries, territories and dependencies.

The Church of Scientology and its members are proud to share the tools for happier living contained in The Way to Happiness with all who also have the goal of a better world. For more information, visit www.Scientology.org/thewaytohappiness.

Scientology: How We Help—The Way to Happiness, Creating a World of Honesty, Trust & Self-Respect is one of a series of brochures published by the Church of Scientology International to meet requests for more information about the Scientology religion and its support of global humanitarian initiatives and social betterment programs.