Kathmandu Tent Shelter

Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers provide shelter for homeless in earthquake-stricken Nepal

Kathmandu Tent Shelter

Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers are providing disaster relief in Nepal, which is still in a state of chaos after deadly and destructive earthquakes in April.

Volunteer Ministers originally sent 100 volunteers to Nepal to aid in earthquake disaster rescue and response. The number of volunteers, most of them stationed in the capital Kathmandu, has since grown significantly.

The Volunteer ministers, working with a team of scouts, have participated in cleaning debris from roads, treated people with Scientology techniques that allegedly help relieve shock and trauma, searched for survivors in the rubble and delivered electricity, food and medicine to those whose homes were destroyed in the devastating earthquakes.

Most recently a school football field in a Kathmandu suburb was transformed to a tent city by the volunteers, including members of the Canadian army and Volunteer-Minister-trained Nepali scouts. Now hundreds of families who have lost their homes in the earthquake are living there under the care of the school.

Among the now hundreds of volunteers on the Scientology disaster response team is also a team of doctors, a nurse, and paramedics.

Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers have worked with the scouts in Nepal since 2008. The Volunteer Minister program was created in the mid-1970s by L. Ron Hubbard and sponsored by the Church of Scientology International as a “religious social service.”

Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers have been visible in many of the major disasters in recent years, such as the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the 2004 Asian tsunami and the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001. The Church of Scientology has heavily increased the size – and the profile – of the Volunteer Ministers program. According to the church there are now over 95,000 Volunteer Ministers.

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