CHILDREN’S APPEAL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 81, Issue 7252, 15 September 1950, Page 3

CHILDREN’S APPEAL

NEW ZEALAND DRIED MILK LIKELY EXPORT TO UNICEF Reports received by the Dominion headquarters of the United Nations Appeal for Children indicate the likelihood that much of the money now being collected will be spent on the purchase of New Zealand dried milk for distribution to the children of Asian countries. The actual decision on how New Zealand donations will be spent rests with the 26-Nation Executive Board of Unicef at Lake Success; but all the money collected in New Zealand will be spent in this country, as was done after the 1948 appeal.

Milk powder is widely used by Unicef to provide proteins in its supplementary feeding programmes in distressed countries. From information given in the latest report by the director of Unicef’s Far East headquarters it seems probable that milk from New Zealand will be used in Afghanistan, Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaya, North Borneo and Singapoie. Reporting on the feeding programmes in the Far East, the report said: “The children in this region are on the shortest rations of those anywhere in the world, and they are among those with the greatest dietary deficiencies.’ Moreover, they have been hungrier than usual in the last few years because of the war and political disturbances in rice-growing countries. Furthermore, in the next five years the countries in this area will be hard-pressed to maintain even the present standards.

“There is promise for the more distant future, through the planning for technical aid to increase food production through the use of enriched rice, and the wider use of vegetables. In the meantime, milk fills an important need for protein.” The report makes the interesting comment that it is largely a myth that children who have not been brought up on milk will not learn to drink and like it. Unicef has photographs of children in jungle villages drinking out of coconut shells as readily as the children in European countries drink from cups in model kitchens.

“A related question of interest in this aiea,” continues the report, “is what Unicef should and can do about illnesses created by serious diet deficiencies. The standard answer in Western countries is that the s.oli*ion is more and better-balanced foocT “For mothers who have anaemia, or children who have beri-beri, however, this answer is mere words. If they have to wait until the countries in this area have balanced diets for all, they will have to wait in Heaven. On the other hand, Unicef obviously cannot meet the total need with its small funds.” The Far East director points out in the report that the relatively small funds available from Unicef for a large population call for unusually careful selection of projects. In the Far East they had about 10,000,000 U.S. dollars assigned for nearly 600,000,000 million people—an average of less than two cents per capita. In a comment on this report, Mr. C. S. Falconer, Dominion chairman of U.N.A.C., said that it stressed the need for New Zealanders, as well as other people in the world, to give their most generous support to Unicef to save countless thousands of children from slow death by starvation. New Zealand was specially concerned because Unicef was now shifting much of its work to Eastern and Pacific countries which were nearer to New Zealand than Europe was. Anything that New Zealand could do now to build up goodwill in those countries would be a good investment for the future. “I ask every household in New Zealand to give now to the 1950 United Nations Appeal for Children,” Mf. Falconer concluded. “It is suggested that one pound from every household is not too much to expect, if that were given we would easily reach our objective of £500,000.”