David Miscavige Presents
IAS Freedom Medal Winners
Arresting the decline of drug proliferation was the first topic in Mr. David Miscavige‘s round-up of year number 19‘s accomplishments. It was, as well, the cause championed by the evening‘s first IAS Freedom Medal winners Michael Neilson and Åsa Graaf, leaders of a team of drug education specialists in Sweden who, in Mr. David Miscavige‘s words, are “doing more to handle the drug problem than any other group on the planet.”
Neilson and Graaf set out ten years ago to save Swedish children from a drug problem of epic proportions. In that time, they have not only salvaged an entire generation, they have created a nationwide movement for a drug-free tomorrow.
Australian Wendy Honnor, the next Freedom Medal recipient, is a Scientology Volunteer Minister working one-on-one with residents of all social strata in her native Tasmania.
“Our final Freedom Medal Winner didn‘t just answer a call — she led a charge,” said Mr. David Miscavige in introducing Honnor, “In fact, her personal mission of bringing real help has given new meaning to that old phrase ‘charity begins at home.‘”
Honnor assists local leaders in communities throughout her island home state with the 19 technologies a Scientology Volunteer Minister is trained in. In so doing, she has helped to change the tune of media headlines from those that once trumpeted “the land of gloom and doom” — marked by the nation‘s highest suicide rate and 10-year economic slump — to the upbeat of a state now enjoying a full social and economic resurgence.
On that theme — of what one individual Scientologist can do to bring about dramatic change — Mr. David Miscavige told the audience, in closing, “Your participation is more than the proper thing to do. It‘s the difference between more of ‘same old, same old‘ and total freedom. That‘s the crossroad where we stand, a place and point in time where our actions individually and collectively, will determine the course of history.”
