AN URGENT CALL

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 20, 18 October 1944, Page 6

AN URGENT CALL

Guides For U.N.R.R.A. Work In Europe The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration plans to send a small number of personnel from New Zealand to help with relief work among the thousands of displaced people of the occupied countries of Europe. The Dominion headquarters of the Girl Guides’ Association makes an urgent call to members, past and present, ot the guide movement, to volunteer for this relief work. It states that all young women over the age of 18 and who are physically fit and have certain qualifications may volunteer and take the training, but probably only those' over 21 years will be sent abroad. The qualifications necessary are humanitarian motives and some guide qualifications of ability, initiative and reliability, aud camping experience. Also a knowledge of oue or more of the following: Nursing, medicine, vehicle maintenance, cookery, agriculture, child welfare, dietetics, occupational therapy, languages, or experience in welfare, emergency feeding, or first aid work. The work abroad will probably be organizing camps for those trying to return to their homes, manning wayside first aid posts, cooking, helping in remote villages and ou farms, looking after children and doing any other jobs volunteers are asked to do. They must expect to live under hard and possibly dangerous conditions without any of the amenities of civilization, and among people suffering in mind, body and spirit. A warning is given that only those with a clear understanding of the issue at stake and with sufficient steadfastness of purpose to carry them through file day-to-day hardship and strain, difficulty aud monotony, should volunteer. If selected to represent the guide movement, applicants will then have to go before a selection committee of U.N.R.R.A., who will make tile final decision as to whether candidates are suitable to send abroad for this work. If selected candidates are able to contribute toward their expenses they are encouraged to do so, but inability to do this will not debar them from acceptance.