Children’s Fund Needs Bigger Effort From N.Z.

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30447, 22 May 1964, Page 14

Children’s Fund Needs Bigger Effort From N.Z.

“The work of the Save the Children Fund is expanding and our overheads are increasing. New Zealand has, and is doing a tremendous amount, but we need an even bigger effort from you,” said Lieutenant-Colonel J. V. Hawkins, the world director of overseas relief and welfare for the fund, in Christchurch, last evening.

Colonel Hawkins has just completed a tour of the fund’s projects in Korea and Hong Kong and will be in -New Zealand until Monday visiting branches. He is also offering New Zealanders the opportunity of taking on a further 100 sponsorships of families from Seoul. These were families most of whom were living under bridges amid the frightful smell of river-carried sewage.

Persons, as many as four living in a space 6ft by Bft, were living under bridges with perhaps about 50 others, all crammed on the bank under the girders, he said. ■ The fund cared for a permanent number of 20,000 children in Korea. Here there was a definite case for day to day relief for the many starving children, said Colonel Hawkins. Long-term Work

The feeling had arisen that welfare work was a shortterm project. He did not agree. If a child fell in the river a person would jump in and save him from drowning, then later a parapet would be built to prevent further accidents. “Day to day relief is paralleled with medical work,” he said.

From New Zealand, Colonel Hawkins asked for more milk, more goods and more money. Speaking on the problems the fund was faced with in Korea. Colonel Hawkins said that 63 per cent of the total population was in the South which had a total land mass of 42 per cent. The economy was unbalanced because the agricultural south was divided from the light-industrial north.

The fund had begun an agricultural scheme five miles from Pusan .in south-east Korea in an effort to raise living standards. It had provided correct fertilisers and equipment and working bullocks.

When the Japanese left in 1945 land that had produced nine cups of grain per pyong (a plot 6ft by 6ft) dropped in

production to five cups. After the first year of the threeyear scheme, production was up to seven cups. "We are are aiming for nine cups." Leper Colonies There were quite a number of leper colonies. A second agricultural scheme had been started at one colony and lepers were getting back a purpose in life, said Colonel Hawkins. A third scheme was at the Yoon Hwa Sook beggar home where 400 boys and girls under 18 lived. Ground near the home was under cultivation with the result that less money and food had to be supplied. In the home is a library—the Allen Child Memorial Library. It was donated by Mr and Mrs A. Child, of Canterbury. in memory of their son, said Colonel Hawkins.