CHRISTMAS TREE APPEAL

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29388, 15 December 1960, Page 18

CHRISTMAS TREE APPEAL

Donations Or Toys Wanted “When, during the next fortnight. you stand under the shining bright lights of the Cathedral Christmas tr:e, will you leave a toy for the sick children or a coin in the boxes near the tree for those who are homeless and cold and for those who are sick,” says an appeal issued by the president of the New Zealand Save the Children Fund <Miss M. G. Haveiaar). “The Christchurch Cathedral Christmas tree is lit, the shops are full of tempting Christmas gifts, many schools having closed for the summer recess, parents and children are doing their. Christmas shopping, Christmas parties are held daily and our postmen are very laden already when they arrive at our homes. "Two letters have just reached me. One is from Hermagor Hospital (Austria) for crippled children, very many of them refugees and victims of poliomyelitis. ‘Do your realise,’ the letter says, ‘what the Canterbury free bed here means? It has given a chance in life to many children, none of which could have afforded the treatment which represents their only chance of recovery. That bed and the treatmen it represents means a yearly payment of £300.' “The other letter comes from Pusan (South Korea). ‘We are more and more concerned about the increasing numbers of small boys discovered night after night sleeping against a wall recess or in doorways. December is winter here and the knowledge that children have no shelter and no warmth these cold nights makes us most anxious to be able to enlarge our beggar boys’ home, where already hundreds of homeless, hungry and cold orphan boys are given protection, warmth and food’."

Ambulance Cadet

Trophies

Parents and friends of cadets attended the annual break-up ceremony of the Christchurch Cadet Ambulance Division of the St. John Ambulance Brigade recently when the following trophies were presented:— Divisional individual champion: R. C. G. Curragh. Scott Trophy for junior individual champion: W E Flovd. Leach Dress Cup: j e Collins: Leach Efficiency Cup: P- N. Hilgrove.