Rotary Stamp Exhibition At Industries Fair

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 16

Rotary Stamp Exhibition At Industries Fair

The Rotary Club of East Christchurch will promote an exercise in international communication and understanding through a stamp exhibition at the New Zealand Industries Fair. With the assistance of Rotary clubs in 115 countries and states the Christchurch East club has assembled about 2000 colourful stamps in a striking arrangement

The club secured the stamps by sending, on a sheet bearing an outline of New Zealand, current pictorial stamps together with information about New Zealand and the club. In return, the club asked that similar sheets of stamps be sent from the clubs in the 115 countries. The out-! come is the exhibition at the fair.

A member of the club, Mr P. A. Dunbar, said the purpose of the exercise was to increase knowledge of other countries and peoples, because stamps told stories. The club will charge a small fee for admission to the exhibition and use the proceeds for aid projects in needy areas overseas. The reply from a Rotary club in Malawi was signed by Mr E. F. T. Muirson, who said he had left New Zealand 30 years ago and had once lived in New Brighton.

Some overseas clubs which received New Zealand stamps have sold them. In Ankara the proceeds were added to an orphanage fund for earthquake victims. In Sierra Leone the stamps helped to pay for a washing machine for a Rotary-sponsored maternity home. Mr Dunbar said that other Rotary cl tbs in New Zealand and overseas had embarked on similar projects, “Through this display we hope that many of our own people will get a better picture of the life and development in other countries and that philatelists will appreciate the technical and artistic merits of the stamps,” he said. After exhibitions in schools the stamps will be sold by tender or auction and the proceeds used to swell overseas funds.