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Editorials

Salient

April 1, 1966

Operation 21 doesn't impress

Today Ends the eighth week of "Operation 21," an activity organised by the Corso Freedom from Hunger campaign and the National Youth Council. It is described as "part of a world-wide movement aimed at mobilising youth in the fight against hunger."

Salient—as one of the few publications in this country which circulates amongst the people intended to be involved in this campaign—has been sent publicity material by the organisers.

The main statement of its aims, a pamphlet called "Youth Against Hunger," leaves us distinctly unimpressed.

It would be difficult to imagine a proposal less likely to inspire university students to action.

A careful study of the pamphlet reveals only one stated reason why students should do something— because people are hungry—and a very hazy, ill-described outline of what they can do.

We expect something more from the people who run this aid programme than the naive idea that because men are starving, we should therefore feed them.

We would first ask:

• Why are they starving?

• How can they best be fed?

• How can we help them ensure that this situation will not continue?

• Since we cannot aid all, whom should we aid first?

• What can we do best—send ourselves or send our economic aid?

The pamphlet offers no answers. It merely says:

Act Yourself in the Operation 21 programme in your town, city and district. If no activities are planned in your area, get together with as many groups as possible and start something. Consider serving overseas as a volunteer ... join a work camp team ... arouse public interest with displays, teach-ins, debates ... conduct promotional and fund-raising efforts to support the project and to directly benefit the less fortunate overseas.

Give Of Yourself to operation 21's 10x10 scheme. Every New Zealander between 13 and 30 (708,000 of them) will be asked to give 10 per cent of their wages or pocket money for the last 10 weeks of the Operation 21 programme. This money will go towards overseas projects. You could help distribute coin envelopes.

Pledge Yourself to youth's fight against hunger. Fill in and sign the attached Operation 21 "Declaration against Hunger" and send it in. It will be presented, with thousands of others, to the Government and United Nations to urge them into action.

It then outlines what has been or will be done:

Operation 21 Already Has These Schemes Underway. An Operation 21 Work Camp on the outskirts of Suva (Fiji) planted a large area of rice to put the impoverished native families in the area back on their feet.

Thirty New Zealand University students made up the volunteer party and spent a month of their vacation working on the scheme, paying their own fares, to and from Fiji. It was Operation 21's first project to help the less fortunate help themselves to a better way of life. A similar scheme was conducted in Samoa, where student volunteers spent four weeks planting a complete new Banana Plantation—a fruit very much connected with the livelihood and health of the Pacific Islanders.

There are other projects underway too: these include the adoption of villages in the Philippines to improve their agricultural methods and living standards; the bringing of eight young Korean farmers to New Zealand to work on dairy farms for a year; the purchasing of a tractor and implements to assist the work of a New Zealand agricultural graduate who is training young Indian men in modern farming methods.

Can it really be said that the work camps already undertaken justify their expense? Planting rice in Fiji, or bananas in Samoa, is, surely, not work for well-meaning but untrained New Zealand students.

The young labourers of these countries, used to working in tropical climates, would surely be glad to be employed to do such work.

What is needed urgently is a thorough examination of the aims of our overseas aid, coloured not by political or religious views, but by the economic realities of the situation.

It may well be that the active promotion of birth control education and the provision of subsidies for such literature and devices would do more to help than all the well-intentioned efforts of "Operation 21."

There are many hundreds of young New Zealanders at this university who care deeply about the problems of the world today. But they ask, as they are well-entitled to do, whether this country is doing what is really needed through the present aid system.—H.B.R.