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Salient. The Newspaper of Victoria University College. Vol. 20, No. 5. June 14, 1956

Move to bring S.E. Asian student to N.Z

Move to bring S.E. Asian student to N.Z.

It has been the growing concern of student opinion in New Zealand during recent years that we take so little notice of our near neighbours in S.E. Asia, and they even less notice of us.

With this in mind, a sub-committee of NZUSA was set up last year to consider a scheme under which students from S.E. Asia could be brought to New Zealand to study.

Starting next year

The result of much planning, the scheme will be put into effect next year when a student from Indonesia will come to New Zealand for two or three years; and then another student will follow, perhaps from another country, and so on.

The S.E. Asian Scholarship Fund which will make this scheme possible is to be built up by contributions from all the constituent colleges. This college must raise, as its contribution to the scholarship, £110 by the end of July and a total of £220 by the end of the Varsity year. In following years the sum will be £110 only.

A committee has been formed to raise the necessary finance, and with the consent of the Minister of Internal Affairs a raffle has been started in the college to this end.

The majority of people in South-East Asia are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and have little defence against diseases, and to root of their difficulties is lack of education.

Why help?

Easy-living New Zealanders are inclined to ask: "Why help these people? Our lives seem in no way bound with theirs." Would we walk past a stranger in the street who had fallen and was calling for our help?

The crux of the problem is apparently not any lack of willingness to help on our part, and certainly not any lack of the means.

What is needed is an awareness of the conditions in S.E. Asia. In fact, it is a Christian duty and even an act of ordinary decency for every one of us to look across and ask how we can assist the '"fallen strangers."

As students, the sphere in which we are best equipped to help is education, and it is hoped that, with the full support of all New Zealand students, this scholarship will be a worthwhile contribution.