Saving the children

Press, 22 September 1984, Page 17

Saving the children

The work of the international charitable aid orSiisation, the Save the Idren Rind, will be featured in two television programmes this month.

Screening of the programmes, both set in Africa and highlighting the fund’s emergency work in famine areas, comes at an opportune time with the fund’s national door-to-door appeal on Saturday, September 29. The first programme, “Princess Anne in Africa,” will be shown tomorrow on Two at 4.20 p.m. The 20minute documentary shows the Princess, in her role as president of the fund, on tour in West Africa earlier this year. It presents a Princess whose compassion and stamina during her visit of some of the world’s poorest countries won her the much deserved admiration of an often critical media, the fund says. Everywhere the Princess visited, her concern for suf-

fering children and her enthusiastic interest in the work of the fund brought encouragement to staff and local communities.

The second programme, a revealing 50-minute documentary entitled “Seeds of Despair,” will be screened on One at 10 p.m. on Friday, September 28. Filmed by British Central Independent Television, this programme is centred on Korem, a town in the drought-stricken Wollo region of Ethiopia. The fund runs emergency feeding programmes at Korem, where the original population of about 500 has swelled to more than 20,000 with people forced from their homes in search of food.

The programme hides nothing and is a grim reminder of the worsening fate of a country whose people have now experienced more than a decade of drought. Interspersed with scenes

of death and starvation are interviews with Dr Kenneth King, the United Nations resident representative to Ethiopia. “It is the ethical duty of developed countries to provide humanitarian aid,” says Dr King, who calls for the emergency assistance to Ethiopia to be linked with long-term developmental aid.

The immense problems that confront the Save the Children Fund in providing food for Ethiopia’s starving are highlighted in “Seeds of Despair” — the inaccessible land, the unreliability of transport and guerrilla activity. It shows how the fund gives its energies to saving the majority and the factors it is currently assessing in considering the establishment of a second emergency feeding centre.