Appeal By S.C.F. Next Week

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31772, 31 August 1968, Page 2

Appeal By S.C.F. Next Week

A mere 5c will provide a meal for a child at one of the Save the Children Fund feeding centres in Greece, 10c will provide vitamin pills for one child for six months, 12c will keep a child for a day in Korea, and 50c will buy enough food for a Korean family for a day.

The north Canterbury branch of the S.C.F. will hold its annual Rice Bowl appeal from September 1 to September 8. The appeal is held annually to increase public awareness of the work of the fund and to raise money to meet its outstanding commitments.

World problems such as poverty, hunger and disease are too enormous to be solved by hand-outs any more. Feeding starving children today is not enough—measures must be taken to ensure that the children of tomorrow will not suffer the same sickness, hunger and deprivation.

$lO,OOO A Day In 28 countries throughout the world the fund is getting to the roots of the problem by caring for babies and young children, making sure they are properly fed and tackling the enemies of dirt and ignorance in the homes, inoculating against diseases and teaching mothers how to safeguard their children's health.

World wide operations of the fund cost more than $lO,OOO a day and keep 120,000 children clothed and fed. Because of devaluation and rising costs it will need an additional $427,000 in the next year to maintain existing projects according to the director-general (Sir Colin Thornley), who visited New Zealand early this year. It is a purely voluntary body to help needy children everywhere, Irrespective of nationality, race or creed. Money and goods are dealt with only by the fund personnel or their appointed agents, such as the International Union of Child Welfare, or British ambassadors or consuls. Full-time medical, nursing and child welfare teams are administered by the fund in 18 countries. The latest of these, which was recruited by the S.C.F. for the International Committee of the Red Cross has now reached Biafra, it was officially confirmed in London this week. Four other medical teams are working in Ibo areas now held by Federal Government forces. “It has always been the policy of the fund in any conflict to endeavour to help children in need, regardless of which side of the fighting lines they are found,” the deputy director-general of the S.C.F. (Air Commodore W.

N. Hibbert) said recently in London.

There are 775 field workers, doctors, nurses, welfare workers and administrators employed by the fund and about 700 of these are local inhabitants. It has always been the fund’s policy to train local personnel to carry on the work. Last year the national Rice Bowl appeal raised $79,986, of which $7683 was raised in North Canterbury. In 1966, the local branch contributed $10,200 to the national total of $74,514. In 1965 the national total was $66,000, including $8244 from North Canterbury. New Zealand S.C.F. spends most of its money in Vietnam Korea, Greece and Uganda Milk powder is also sent to Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, India, the Windward Islands, and the Gilbert and Ellice Is lands. In February, 1967, the S.C.F. opened a children's convalescent centre of 50 beds (this has since been extended to 100) for child war victims in Vietnam. Many patients come from the civilian hospital, where the New Zealand surgical team is working. Last year $BOOO was contributed to the running costs of the centre from the Bice Bowl appeal. A sum of $26,000 was sent to Korea where the Fund has 28 projects, including children’s welfare clinics, a hospital tuberculosis wing, a beggar boys’ home, a girls' home, nursery school, two night schools, a vocational training centre, and two leper boys’ homes. Work In Uganda Uganda received $17,000 to help support the nutritional rehabilitation unit which is combatting the wide-spread protein deficiency disease, kwashiorkor, which affects 80 to 90 per cent of the young children.

“How do you persuade someone that he is personally involved in work which may be taking place thousands of miles away, which is helping children he will never know and whose future is only a matter for conjecture?” said the director of fund raising for S.C.F. (Patrica Bryden) recently. “John Dewey, the great American educationalist, said: ‘What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.’ The community to the Save the Children Fund, is the whole world. “We have fallen into the habit of referring to the havenots as the Third world,’ as though they existed as a separate planet. But they are part of our world. “A bad patch in an apple if not cut out will turn the whole apple bad. If we do not cut out the have-nots the whole world will go bad,” she said. In the hands of the Save the Children Fund any sums large or small will be put to maximum use to eliminate the “bad patch.”