COORDINATION AND GUIDANCE

In 1988, the Church formed a separate, non-profit charitable organization called Association for Better Living and Education (“ABLE”) to provide overall guidance of the various social benefit programs churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists had been conducting over the years. This enabled the Church to concentrate its charitable and social benefit effort in a separate organization that could focus exclusively on accomplishing these goals. Since then, ABLE has continued to support and promote the public benefit programs with which the Church traditionally has been concerned and enabled them to expand greatly.

ABLE assists local social betterment programs through four social benefit organizations that are international in scope. These are Narconon International, which works in the field of drug abuse and education; Criminon International, which works in the field of criminal rehabilitation; Applied Scholastics International, which works in the field of education; and The Way To Happiness Foundation International, which seeks to raise society’s moral standards.

Although the social betterment organizations are organized as separate, independent entities, they work closely with local churches by coordinating their activities wherever possible.

Churches of Scientology organize and coordinate a wide range of public benefit activities as diverse as the needs of their communities and the talents and skills of the membership. Among the common activities are community beautification projects to transform public eyesores into pleasing environments, fundraisers for police-sponsored youth programs, blood drives for the Red Cross, holiday toy and clothing drives, neighborhood anti-crime programs, entertainment for children’s hospitals and elderly homes, and assistance to local government and civic community betterment campaigns.