The Volunteer Affidavit Form: Fill & Download for Free

This photo was taken in Araria (Bihar) at the home of Ashish Ranjan, coordinator of Jan Jagaran Shakti Sangathan (JJSS) (http://www.jjabihar.org/) in May 2010. After the social audit of 2nd panchayat (out of the 8 panchayats to be undertaken during May and June of 2010 by JJSS, in association with the Bihar government) in which we exposed large-scale misuse of public money on account of non-performance of work or shoddy work, a newspaper contacted the organization to interview the student volunteers associated with the auditing, and along with our personal interviews and findings of the audit, this photograph got published in the local edition of the newspaper next day.(I am sitting and 2nd from right).Given below is the background story for those who are interested.Background:I had applied for an internship to work as student volunteer to understand the functioning/implementation of one of the largest employment guarantee schemes in the world, namely, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and had volunteered to work for social audit of all the works carried out under the act in 2 panchayats. I had been asked to work in Araria district of Bihar in May 2010. The task was something like this:a) First, we obtain the official documents for each Panchayat (decentralized ruling body for villages in India) which list out various works carried out under the Act, such as afforestation, building of roads/ponds/wells etc. These documents also mention the names of people who have been involved in working on these activities, the number of days they worked and the wages they received.b) The next task is verification of these official documents by meeting all those whose names are listed in the documents and asking them whether they had indeed worked or not, and if yes, then the wages they received and tallying these with official documents. In case some people are willing, they are asked to fill affidavits (we have affidavit forms which work as legal documents) and sign them and asked to come on the day of social audit to testify before the public. In general, all people are asked to come on the day of social audit, since it is an audit for the benefit of the village(s).c) The last stage for any Panchayat is the day of social audit, when people who live in the village(s) under the Panchayat come to participate. It's like a Gram Sabha meeting, where in theory all people (or at least a significant majority) of the population under the administrative supervision of the Panchayat is supposed to be present before taking any major decisions regarding the village(s). Officials/public representatives, both at Panchayat level and also at city level (sometimes this can include Collector also) are also present as they are also invited.Before the public and the officials/public representatives present, a list of works is read out and both the information given in official documents and that obtained through verification is spelled out. In our case, we found more than 90% of names in official documents as those who either did not exist or did exist but had not participated in any of the works. Most works had not been performed at all or just done in a shoddy manner and sometimes what had been done was way different from what had been suggested in official documents.The responsibility for implementation of the Act lies with the Gram Panchayat, Gram Sabha, and most importantly, Panchayat Rozgar Sewak (PRS) who is appointed by the State Government (Bihar Govt.) and is supposed to help the Gram Sabha in deciding which works to continue and making cost estimates of the work. Then there is head of the Panchayat, called Mukhiya in Bihar, who is also responsible for proper distribution of wages and helping PRS in securing required funds from government bureaucracy which has various levels at which sanction and transfer is done.The massive corruption exposed led to more media focus and pressure on the state government to take action against the corrupt officials and at least some of them were removed from their posts and asked to pay back the amount they had misappropriated for personal use, such as the PRS in one of the 2 panchayats I worked in. And to an extent, there has been improvement in functioning of MGNREGA now, even if due to the fear that such instances of corruption may be caught yet again, although it has not stopped, sadly.

Top Ten Reasons I’m Against Voter ID Laws:Most of the people affected are poor and brown, and many are old, or quite young. They do not have cars or driver’s licenses.Driving and flying are privileges. Voting is a Constitutional right, meaning that the absolute minimum number of obstacles should be placed in the path of those wishing to do it.The state legislatures decide, often very arbitrarily, which forms of ID will be acceptable.In states where there are a lot of students, for example, Republican legislators have chosen to exclude student ID cards as valid forms of identification, even when issued by a state university (in other words, “government issued ID cards”).In at least one state, after a new voter ID requirement was established, the state shut down the DMV offices in more than half of the majority-black counties.It’s expensive to get a new ID. In many cases it requires buying a copy of your birth certificate from the private contractor who handles vital records requests for the county of your birth, then paying on top of that the fee for a state non-driver ID. In at least one case I know of, a county courthouse burned down with all the paper records, and a whole generation of people can’t access their birth certificates anymore. The more affluent ones can hire attorneys for appeals and alternatives. Not the poor.Even in states where they don’t shut down DMV offices that are near the brown-skinned population, those offices have limited hours and are still some miles away from the people who need them, and who don’t have cars to get there, so they need a ride both ways, often with hours of waiting in between.When I was 18, my parents took me in, vouched for me as their child, and I registered to vote in Maryland. In New York, in DC, and then in Oregon, I signed affidavits that I was a citizen in order to register. At the polling places there were huge logbooks of all registered voters in the precinct. Every time you voted you signed the book. If your signature matched, you got a ballot. If your signature did not match, they gave you a provisional ballot. No ID required at the polling place.Many of those affected have lived in the same towns their whole lives. The election volunteer ladies know them. They have voted in their towns without ID for decades.ALL OF THIS IS BEING DONE, ostensibly, to curb a form of voter fraud that is so rare as to be nearly nonexistent: voter impersonation. In California in 2018 they established that in the entire state six people voted who were not citizens (because the state misclassified them). That’s six out of more than 20,000,000 voters. The Brennan Center keeps good stats on this.https://www.quora.com/q/political-clarity/Before-Republicans-Conservatives-talk-about-background-checks-for-buying-guns-why-won-t-the-left-Democrats-support/comment/851435

Like other religious organizations, the Church of Scientology uses social outreach programs both to accomplish the church's spiritual goals and ostensibly to meet the needs of the public. For the public, the devil is hidden in the details.Volunteer MinistersOne of Scientology's goals is to protect the public from the "psychs", a Scientology term for psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists. Scientology scripture describes psychs as "the sole cause of decline in this universe" (HCOB 25 Aug 1982).Members of Scientology's "Volunteer Ministers" outreach program travel to disaster sites to carry out their goals. To keep professional mental health workers away from the disaster victims Volunteer Ministers have presenting themselves falsely as mental health service providers (refer to Volunteer Ministers).It seems odd to outsiders how ministers would be deceptive in this manner, but Scientology scripture is frank about the need to lie to achieve desired goals, even within the church itself. Church lawyers at least once tried to discredit the testimony of former parishioners because they had been trained to lie as part of their job within the church.(1) Below are various Scientology scripture on lying:"It's a trap not being able to prevaricate" (2)"THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM" (3)"Organised religion tries to control, so therefore must be lying" (4)"The student should be coached on a gradient until he/she can lie facilely" (5)"[Public Relations] becomes the technique of communicating an acceptable truth — and which will attain the desirable result" (6)The last scripture is in the Volunteer Minister's Handbook, the spiritual training aid for Volunteer Ministers. Although the handbook cautions against the dangers of lying, in practice an "acceptable truth" is anything which is not the truth, including a lie, as long as it does not end up reflecting negatively on the church.WARNING: the following links are hosted by Scientology critics.(1) Scientology --- *HUGE* digest of old Globe and Mail articles (search for "confessed liars and criminals")(2) Philadelphia Doctorate Course, lecture "How to Talk to Friends about Scientology"(3) Emphasis in original, "Technique 88", The Fishman Affidavit: Exhibit B(4) "Technique 88", The Fishman Affidavit: Exhibit B(5) Intelligence Specialist Training Routine–Lying (TR-L)(6) HCOPL 13 August 1970 Issue II PR Series 2, in The volunteer minister's handbookApplied ScholasticsThe Applied Scholastics organization attempts to get a modified version of the Scientology Study Tech scripture taught in schools. The scripture is "secularized" by removing mention of Scientology and Hubbard.Consistent with the Scientology notion "psychs" are at the root of all evil, Applied Scholastics gives little or no credence to "learning disorders" (refer to Study Technology :: Study Tech, Learning How to Learn, Cause of Learning Disorders). Study Tech states there are only three ways learning can go wrong:Information was not provided in the proper order.Information was not given a solid form via techniques such as pictures or clay modeling.There is a misunderstood word in the information.If a teacher has made sure #1 and #2 are not issues and a student still struggles with understanding a topic, then the student must have gone past a misunderstood word in the materials. There is no other reason for not understanding the topic.The remedy for a suspected misunderstood word is for the student to continually back up in the material while consulting a dictionary to make sure every word is understood until a misunderstood word is found and no longer misunderstood. As long as the student has issues, they continue to back up.If a student backs up all the way to the beginning and does not find a misunderstood word in the materials, then they go through all of the words they looked up in the dictionary and look up the words in the dictionary definitions until they find a misunderstood word.If a student finds no misunderstood words in the materials or the dictionary definitions, then the student is being obstinate and refusing to understand. I don't know how it's handled outside the church, but within the church the obstinate student would be suspected of being a Suppressive Person.NarcononThe Narconon organization uses modified versions of Scientology scripture and religious rites as a form of drug rehabilitation. A drug user described her controversial treatment at a Narconon facility this way: Page on xojane.com .