C.O.R.S.O. role in helping overseas

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32634, 16 June 1971, Page 15

C.O.R.S.O. role in helping overseas

Thousands of people in many parts of the world and in such diverse places as a hospital in Ethopia, an old people’s home in Greece, .a high school in Western Samoa, and an agricultural project in Cambodia, will benefit from contributions made by New Zealanders to C.0.R.5.0. this year. Last year C.0.R.5.0. made about 80 grants to relief and development projects and they amounted to nearly $750,000. The range of activities to be supported this year will be similar, and in addition it is hoped to provide more than $50,000 for help to refugees from East Pakistan.

New Zealanders are involved in many of the proects. In the Princess Tshai hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a husband and wife doctor team has been treating women for childbirth injuries for the last 10 years. At Cheju Island, Korea, a Volunteer Service Abroad worker. Mr J. Collie, was given $4OOO to help with a development programme using New Zealand sheen, cattle, and pigs; and in Pakistan another New Zealander was given a small Kt to help her work as of the Pakistan Christian Blind Society. N.Z. products

New Zealand products such as milk biscuits, medical equipment, agricultural machinery, and livestock are used in some projects. About 60 per cent of New Zealand funds of C.0.R.5.0. are spent in this way. “People who talk of aid being wasted and dissipated or of the wrong sort of aid being given speak in ignorance of the facts,” the Rev. H. C. Dixon, the director of the organisation says. . “Nothing is provided Unless specifically requested, and even if a. request is made we thoroughly check to ensure that our help is going to a bona fide organisation, that it is meeting a real need, and that the organisation has the expertise to distribute or use the goods or money properly.” C.0.R.5.0. has even had its money refunded at times. This occurred last year when

a development project was abandoned in Korea.

C.0.R.5.0. was formed after the Second World War and its immediate problem was involved in the resettlement of millions of people in Europe who had been displaced by’ war and political conflict In the 1950 s hunger and starvation in areas of rapid population growth became the .major concern and led to the launching of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign in 1962. Now the concern of the organisation is poverty in its most general sense, with hunger just one facet. Aims of efforts

“Our efforts are being directed towards education, development, and the general improvement of the infrastructure of an underdeveloped nation’s economy,” Mr Dixop says. “Our relief projects continue to meet immediate needs in times of disaster, drought, famine, and political turmoil, but the emphasis is on development” More than $75,000 has been provided for U.N.1.C.E.F.applied nutrition programmes in Korea, the Philippines, India, and East Nigeria. In the Pacific money has been provided to help the establishment of a high school agricultural course at a Tongan college, the sponsoring of 20 Pacific Island girls a year at a one-year home economics course in Fiji, and the establishment of a tropical agricultural college in Western Samoa.