This will acknowledge receipt of your letter concerning an appeal for individual overseas help. Inasmuch as we get more than a hundred of these every day it is not possible to write you individually as we would prefer. Nor is it possible to seek a report on each particular case. Such personal appeals are reaching America in floods, often multiple letters from the same writer.

The overseas relief of Church World Service is administered through national interdenominational committees in each of the needy countries in Europe. Under these committees are local organizations made up of pastors and others who know the conditions and people in their own areas and can judge as to the most equitable destribution of relief supplies on the basis of priority needs.

Our cooperating committees overseas deplore the random sending of packages to unknown persons just because they write a letter. This is the most expensive form of help, and also opens the danger of improper exploitation of American Christian generosity. Money used for bulk purchases to be distributed as above outlined is much more effective and provides more help to more people.

We are therefore forwarding the letter you received, along with many others, to our corresponding committee in the country of its origin and can assure you that if it is humanly possible, the writer will be located and if found to be worthy and not receiving other aid, will be given a full share in the distribution of such relief as is available.

Meanwhile we urge you to give the equivalent of a food or clothing package and as much more as you can to your own church for overseas relief or to World Church Service. In this way you will be helping to provide a maximum of help and at the same time strengthening the effective influence of the church through this distinctively Christian ministry.

EDITORIALtaken from the June 4thCHRISTIAN CENTURY

SEND RELIEF THROUGH ATTESTED AGENCIES

The letter from Dr. A. L. Warnshuis printed in our correspondence department in this issue reflects a situation of growing importance to those who wish to render Christian charity to war victims. As mail services is gradually being restored throughout the devastated regions of Europe, more and more direct appeals from individuals, and in some cases from pastors speaking in behalf of their parishioners, are being received in this country. There is no reason to doubt the essential truthfulness of the descriptions of great need given in most of these letters. The first impulse of recipients may be to rush off relief parcels to the addresses given. But sober second thought should make it clear that there are better ways of doing what the Christian conscience demands shall be done. Unfortunately, there are here and there in the ravaged countries plausible and articulate letterwriters who are not above trying to trade on the sympathies of Americans whose names and addresses they have in some way managed to obtain. Bodies like Church World Service, for example, have worked out methods whereby relief supplies will reach individuals and parishes whose need has been certified according to categories of immediacy carefully drawn up by informed interdenominational committees that check on the distribution to the last ounce of food and the last garment. Harm rather than helpfulness is likely to follow from going outside these tested, coordinated efforts. The wisest way of handling individual appeals reaching this country therefore is to send them on to Church World Service, 37 East 36th Street, New York 16, New York, for investigation, and to continue forwarding relief funds and supplies through that same interchurch agency.

Dr. Warnshuis' letter:

SIR: Is it advisable to encourage people to send personal parcels to Europe, as proposed in recent letters published in your collumns? That is a question that Church World Service has considered many times, and always the answer has been negative.

For people to send parcels to their relatives or to personal friends is natural, and no objection is valid. But to send parcels to strangers, whose names and addresses are obtained in various ways, is another matter.

We receive hundreds of letters from individuals, and many such appeals have been investigated. Most of the cases were worthy, but no more so than those of their neighbors, who may not have been enterprising enough or did not have the opportunity of sending their names to America. In a few cases, there was enough enterprise to succeed in getting parcels from more than one American donor. It is obvious that this method of giving aid results in inequitable distribution.

CWS strictly observes the principle of sending its aid to national, intedenominational church committees. Such committees send the aid to the most needy places, and there the local churches, in a careful, systematic way, distribute as fairly as possible to those in need. We buy more than can be obtained by individual purchases. Moreover, in this way we are strengthening the churches, helping them to be stronger agencies for social welfare.

To help more people most effectively, we urge that money be used not for individual parcels, but that it be sent to your own church, designated, if desired, for overseas relief. Your church is probably a cooperating member of CWS. The other method is like giving handouts in a casual way instead of giving aid through a charity organization.

A STATEMENT ABOUT METHODS OF GIVING

One of the brightest spots on an otherwise generally dark world horizon is the responsiveness of American Christians to the needs of their fellows in war-torn and famine threatened areas. Despite national confusions as to major political settlements and long-range economic policies, there is an immediate desire to extend quick relief, and this desire has been implemented through cooperative church channels to the extent of more than twenty-five millions of dollars in cash and contributed goods over the past two years. Even this is but a beginning and little more than a token in view of the vastness of need and the immediacy of suffering.

It is natural that many generous individuals and groups of givers should feel a desire to have their help personalized in some concrete way. They know that what aid they can offer is being given out in their name by the various church and inter-church organizations. But they would like the satisfaction of knowing that they were helping Mr. and Mrs. X, or the Y family of orphans, or the destroyed church at Z. In many instances they would like to receive photographs as well as letters, not realizing that in the areas and among the people where the need is greatest, pictures are almost out of the question, and there is not even paper or ink for writing! Many schemes for such individual connections have been proposed, and some, with a vast amount of toilsome detail, are operating with a degree of success. However, after careful study in the light of experience and fully recognizing certain psychological and promotional values in the person-to-know contacts, Church World Service discourages this type of individual adoption project for the following reasons:

1) It makes for inequity and unbalance in the general program which is designed to render maximum help where it is most needed and can be most effectively administered. What justification is there for selecting a certain few individuals or churches for special consideration? Such favoritism is bound to arouse questioning and criticism and lead to jealousy and ill will. Even if wise choices were originally made as to need and worthiness, if the help given is generous and continued, it will soon mean that the fortunate ones will be still further advantaged over their fellows who are in equal or greater need.

2) In the matter of material goods, individual packages or parcels are the least economical way of affording help. Costs of purchase and postage are at a maximum, and owing to the chaotic conditions of transportation in much of the world delivery is often delayed and in some areas still uncertain. Wholesale purchases and shipment assure economies in procurement and are the best guarantee of maximum final distribution to needy individuals through conscientious representatives of the churches.

3) Reports from overseas indicate that where special designated help is given to certain individuals or groups, the tendency is to hide it or minimize it and make full claim in the more general distributions of funds or goods. It is putting human nature under too great a strain to expect otherwise after all the loss and deprivation that has been endured. A further adverse report from overseas shows that such special favoritism tends to undercut initiative and weaken efforts for self-help on the part of the beneficiaries, who feel that they have unlimited resources back of them. It creates a willingness to be carried and rouses hopes that are socially unsound.

4) On the part of the donors, such narrowing of support to a single objective, while it may produce a temporary intensifying of interest and giving, is apt to dull the larger perspective and limit the response to the fuller program of the church at large. It is well known that initial impulses of this sort often wither away as enthusiasm wanes or the original promoters turn their attention to other matters. The best intentions in the world do not prevent letdowns and disappointments which only aggravate the original suffering.

5) Finally, there are complications in the administration of individual projects at both the giving and the receiving ends of the transaction. The boards and executives who are responsible for the whole program of service can be more effective if with a minimum of detailed limitation, they are free to administer help according to circumstances in situations which often change unexpectedly, or if they are able to meet emergency needs without having their funds frozen for certain designated objectives. Therefore, the most effective method of helpfulness is that which has a minimum of designation, or at least, designation only according to major areas or classifications of activity.

Consequently, Church World Service hopes that its generous supporters in the churches will be willing to set aside their personal desires for first-hand contacts, gratifying as these might be, and make their maximum gifts through the established program which seeks to administer in the wisest possible way all the assistance in relief and reconstruction that can be made available. We believe that the local pastors or committees are best qualified to determine the neediest and worthiest people to be helped and by entrusting our gifts to them we are strengthening the churches in their service to their respective communities. The churches and institutions in the areas of need are urged to channel their requests through the interchurch committees for approval and validations, rather than to make individual pleas to actual or potential friends and helpers. American donors are urged to send their gifts through their own churches toward swelling their denominationl resources. Church World Service then channels these gifts directly to our representative groups in the countries we are helping. It is by such whole-hearted cooperation that we may be assured of most effective service in the name and in the spirit of Christ, whose instruments we would be in this day of opportunity.