Los Angeles (CSI Press Release) - When a flight chartered by the Church of Scientology leaves Los Angeles for Port-au-Prince on January 21, Haitian Jude Falaise and her 16-year-old son will be on board. Falaise lost 11 family members-brothers, sisters and cousins-in the 7.0 earthquake January 12 and says she wants to help those who did survive.
While receiving grief counseling last week at a Los Angeles Church of Scientology, Falaise learned that the Church was organizing a flight to Haiti for doctors, nurses, EMTs and Volunteer Ministers. She contacted the Scientology Volunteer Ministers Disaster Relief Coordinator to offer her family's homes in Port-au-Prince as housing for volunteers, and when she learned of their work, she decided to join the volunteer team herself.
"I'm leaving the comfort of my home and I'm taking my teenage son with me to go volunteer. What if it was me there with my family, my husband, my children? I feel it is my duty to go."
She has also contacted doctors in Port-au-Prince to encourage them to work with the Volunteer Ministers.
More than 100, including Scientology Volunteer Ministers and medical personnel, will be on Thursday's flight to Port-au-Prince to join teams already there, including 126 Haitian doctors, nurses, EMTs and Volunteer Ministers who arrived on a January 16 charter flight from New York organized by the Church of Scientology.
The Volunteer Ministers are stationed in Port-au-Prince Airport, where they are helping allocating medical personnel, distributing water and food and giving spiritual first aid to relieve shock, stress, exhaustion and trauma.
The Scientology Volunteer Ministers Corps is an embracive program of the Church of Scientology to provide community service, disaster relief and emergency response. Created more than 30 years ago by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, the program has expanded to 203,000 Volunteer Ministers worldwide who have served at 145 worst-case disaster sites, including Ground Zero after 9/11, the Southeast Asia tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
