Volunteers Bring Spirit of Unity, Clean Neighborhood in Shooting’s Wake

CLEARWATER, Fla., Feb. 02, 2017 -- The late night shooting of a young Clearwater man gave seventy volunteers with The Way to Happiness Association of Tampa Bay extra incentive to bring peace and calm at their first clean-up of the year in Clearwater’s Downtown Gateway Neighborhood. Community volunteers from diverse organizations including the Church of Scientology, Consumer Energy Solutions and a local football team came together on Saturday morning, January 28^th, cleaning and collecting 50 full bags of trash.

Community volunteers from diverse organizations including the Church of Scientology, Consumer Energy Solutions and a local football team, all organized by the Way to Happiness Association of Tampa Bay collected 50 full bags of trash in the Gateway neighborhood of Clearwater.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/65430acd-47e9-477e-bf95-bf9670fdb9ba

“The Gateway,” so named because it leads west into downtown, is listed as one of the “blighted” areas in Clearwater and is under the jurisdiction of the Community Redevelopment Agency.

The volunteers launched from the Clearwater Community Garden, started 2 years ago by resident Howard Warshauer, splitting into several teams and heading out to their assigned streets. One team stayed behind to help with a mulching and maintenance project at the garden.

“It is so important to go out into the community and clean up the area. It ‘lifts’ up the environment,” said Tanja Cranton, Executive Director for The Way to Happiness Association of Tampa Bay. “With the recent shooting, it is more important than ever to bring calm into the neighborhood.”

While cleaning up the streets, volunteers from The Way to Happiness Association additionally handed out booklets from The Way to Happiness, a common sense moral guide. Inside the book it says that when you have it flowing through society it’s like “gentle oil spread upon the raging sea, the calm will flow outward and outward.”

“We have seen its success internationally. Such as in Columbia when, after thousands upon thousands of books were distributed, we saw a 50% decrease in crime,” said Ms. Cranton.

As a follow up, the Way to Happiness Association of Tampa Bay is holding an event in recognition of the United Nations International Day of Happiness in the Fort Harrison on Saturday, March 18^th.

For more information, please contact The Way to Happiness Center in Downtown Clearwater at (727) 467-6961.

The Way to Happiness Association of Tampa Bay

The Way to Happiness was written by L. Ron Hubbard and is available in 112 languages, with some 115 million copies distributed in 186 nations. The campaign to distribute the book has been embraced by more than 257,000 groups and individuals. It held the Guinness World Record as the single most-translated nonreligious book and fills the moral vacuum in an increasingly materialistic society.

Dylan Pires
(727) 467-6860