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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

Warning

This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

INTER-CHURCH COUNCIL ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Contents


Activities

As the Council was founded during wartime, it was natural that its early activities were related to war conditions. In 1942, during the National Patriotic Fund Board's appeal for funds, the Council strongly supported the principle of direct giving. Entertainments were arranged for American troops. The welfare of special groups also received attention – for example, WAAFs in Air Force camps, children of working mothers, conscientious objectors, and the Jewish people overseas. The Council took an interest in problems connected with juvenile delinquency and moral laxity. It arranged visitations to prisoners of war. Further, the Council entered a plea for the Government to bring sentences of solitary confinement in defaulters' detention camps into harmony with prison regulations, and urged that an Appellate Tribunal for Conscientious Objectors be constituted. Ways for alleviating the world food crisis, and for implementing the Food for Britain campaign were also considered. The Council prepared a statement on the physical and recreational activities of youth and, at the same time, initiated a campaign for the building – in Wellington Hospital grounds – of a chapel intended to become a nurses' war memorial.


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