MAYOR’S FUND NEEDS £2000.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 375, 17 March 1932, Page 9

MAYOR’S FUND NEEDS £2OOO.

Citizens Asked to Assist in Relief of Distress.

STREET COLLECTION TO-MORROW.

CHRISTCHURCH will be given a chance to play a noble ! part to-morrow. Women and children are without food and clothing. Distress is real. The Mayor’s Relief of Distress Fund is in need of £2OOO and it is wanted to-morrow. There will be every chance to give. Five hundred collectors will be on the streets, anxious to get the money. Every penny will be spent in the relief of distress. The depots established by the Citizens’ Relief Association and the Mayor’s Coal and Blanket Fund are in urgent need of help and it is through them that the proceeds of the collection wiU be distributed. The Mayor (Mr D. G. Sullivan, M.P.) has issued the following message to the community : CRICKET TAKINGS. To be Given to Mayor’s Relief Fund. The Canterbury Cricket Association has agreed to donate to the Mayor’s Relief of Distress Fund the whole of the net proceeds from the final match in connection with its senior competition, which will take place at liagley Park on Saturday, March 19, and Saturday, April 2. The Beckenham Tennis Club will hold a Yankee tournament on its courts in Beckenham Park on Saturday next, in which the club invites all tennis players to participate. It is proposed to devote all entry fees to the Mayor’s Relief of Distress Fund.

“The people of Christchurch have an acknowledged reputation as a community quick to respond with large-heart-ed sympathy to every worthy appeal made to them for help. Particularly did they demonstrate this in the days of the Great War, when they made the mightiest efforts to provide every possible comfort for the soldiers who represented them in the trenches overseas. To-day we are again fighting an enemy that is ruthlessly destroying the happiness and prosperity of many thousands of men, women and children, inflicting on them an undeserved suffering, robbing them of even the necessaries of life. I refer to the great depression that is sweeping the world, leaving behind it a trail of unparalleled misery, penury and want. It is here in our own fair city of Christchurch, and men, women and children are in very truth without adequate food, clothing, shelter and firing. “To meet this terrible situation a noble-hearted band of men and \Vomen, young, old and middle-aged, drawn from every religious and political creed and every social class, have allied themselves ‘together, and to-morrow they will be on the streets with their collecting boxes to receive the offerings of those who recognise their Christian duty and are prepared to do unto others as they would be done by. “Every penny contributed will be wisely spent in the relief of distress. Most of the money given will be devoted to maintaining the depots established by the Citizens’ Relief Association, also in supporting the Mayor’s Coal and Blanket Fund, giving warmth to shivering families in the depth of our southern winter, buying clothes for those who cannot afford to buy them, feeding workless women and girls, helping the young people in the single men’s camps and affording special relief in cases of maternity and sickness. “I have a perfect faith in our citizens that each and all will give according to 'their power and realise the highest ambitions of the collectors to raise a sum of £2OOO for the Mayor’s Relief of Distress Fund.”