EDUCATION AND FOOD

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 2

EDUCATION AND FOOD

Expansion In Indonesia

Indonesia was doing a tremendous amount to further education, and was building and staffing many new schools to cope with the demand for literacy, an American woman who has lived in Djakarta for two years said in Christchurch last evening. She is Mrs J. Corcoran, of Chesterton, Northern Indiana, whose husband has been stationed with the Ministry of Finance in Indonesia, under a United States aid programme. Mr Corcoran will not be leaving • for the United States until later in the year, but his wife and daughter are going home earlier ready for the opening of the new school year. Miss Kathleen Corcoran, who has attended schools in Indonesia, Singapore, and for two years before that, in Bangkok, Thailand, will complete her senior high school year in her home land. Corn Festival “Food and agricultural production is also being pushed ahead in Indonesia,” Mrs Corcoran said. “About two weeks before we left there was a com festival, to help popularise the growing and use of corn so that there will not be complete dependence on the rice crops,” she said. Beef cattle raising and dairying were minor activities but fruit and vegetables grew abundantly in the humid climate, she said. “We had a very nice home in Djakarta, and a house in the mountains about 15 miles away, so we could escape from the heat at the weekends,” Mrs Corcoran said. Peace Corps

Mr John Corcoran was an associate director of the Peace Corps when it was established, and worked with it first in Washington, then Puerto Rico, and later in Bangkok. "The Peace Corps is going very well, and expanding all the time. There are now several thousand volunteers working for it overseas.” ■ Volunteers represented many professions as countries requested assistance in many fields, including teaching, nursing, agricultural work, and all aspects of development.

There had been about 30 members of the corps in Indonesia. “There, athletic coaches and physical education teachers had been requested.” said Mrs Corcoran. Mrs Corcoran and Kathleen are taking a round-about route home, through Australia and New Zealand, Fiji and Tahiti, to see as much as they can of this part of the world.