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Show &JoVspear Readers' contributions bring relief to Ethiopian refugees Washington Last December, we reported on a little-known relief agency called the International Rescue Committee, which is helping to feed starving Ethiopians. It was founded in 1933 at the suggestion of Albert Einstein to help refugees fleeing Hitler's Germany. That crisis is long past, but the IRC is still going strong. In the half-century since, the remarkable thing about the IRC is that it has avoided the fate of many other charitable groups. It has not become top-heavy with administrators; administra-tors; as we reported, the IRC spends only five cents of every dollar donated on paperwork and organization. organiza-tion. The rest goes to the victims of natural and manmade disasters. The response to our report was overwhelming: $150,000 in donations dona-tions for the Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan. The checks, many of them clipped to copies of the column, ranged from $1 to $10,000. "In the days immediately following follow-ing the publication of the column' wrote Al Kastner, an official of the relief agency, "IRC was flooded with calls from people all over the country asking how they might help businessmen, workers, professionals, profes-sionals, students, homemakers, doctors, doc-tors, nurses, schools, church and community groups. Thousands of letters carried the same messages of caring and compassion most of them with contributions." Kastner has been with IRC for 18 years, and he told our associate Dale Van Atta, "We've never received this kind of dollar response before from an article." The outpouring from our readers reinforces our long-held opinion that Americans are the most generous, people on earth especially when it comes to helping children. We were most gratified by the number of young people the supposed "me generation" who leaped at the chance to help starving families half a world away. Take Claire Swann of Delmar, N.Y.,for example. She insisted that her parents include on the invitations to her sixth birthday party a request that guests "bring no gifts, but instead bring gift-equivalent donations dona-tions for the relief of children and families of Ethiopia and the Sudan." Claire's birthday presents totaled $154, which was sent to the IRC with our column attached. The relief organization put our readers' gifts to good and immediate use. A few days after the flood of dollars began, Kastner wrote: "The contributions received so far from your readers will pay for 20 IRC doctors, nurses, feeding specialists and relief workers in the Sudan for a six-month period. One cannot even guess how many lives they will save, how many children on the edge of death will be made well." The IRC workers are concentrating on the most vulnerable victims of starvation: the smallest children and nursing mothers. The dedicated staff regularly works until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. If you wish to add your contribution, IRC's address is 386 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10016. COSTLY GROWTH: A study of the Federal Register, where all new federal rules must be published, shows that the government's regulations regula-tions have grown at a phenomenal rate in the past two decades. In the mid-1950s, the register published 10,000 pages a year ot new regulations. By 1970, that figure had doubled, and by 1980 the new rules took 74,000 pages. According to the study, prepared by Murray Weidenbaum, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the cost to industry of complying with the government regulations over the past three decades has been about $100 billion. Most of this has been passed on to consumers. WATCH ON THE PENTAGON: Sailors at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, Calif. , will soon be able to watch the Playboy Channel, according accord-ing to an official of United Cable of Alameda. The Playboy programming as well as Home Box Office, Showtime, Cable News Network, Sports and Disney channels will be available at the going rate for more than 1,200 housing units on the base. Visiting ships will also be able to hook up. . The i Army has finally taken action sort of to address its serious safety problems. It has decided to hire a private firm "to provide an independent evaluation of the Army Safety Program and make recommendations to improve weak areas." A similar study was undertaken in January 1983, and yet another was begun later in the year. Navy civilian employees at a California weapons station have been informed that their biweekly paychecks, which used to be mailed to their banks for deposit, will now take three days longer to reach the' banks. They're being transmitted by computer. The Air Force has decided to allow women to serve in two-member Minuteman missile crews, starting next year. Following a study, the Air Force decided its original premise that the quarters in the underground Minuteman silos were too confining for women could not be justified. But lack of privacy in the cramped quarters would make it uncomfortable uncomfort-able for mixed couples, the Air Force insists. So the Minuteman crew will be single-gender. Copyright, 1985, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. |