Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service, the Co-operative for American Relief Everywhere, Inc., Lutheran World Service and the Seventh Day Adventist Welfare Service. These five agencies distributed almost twenty-seven and a half million pounds of surplus foodstuffs donated by the United States Government under the American Public Law 480 programme. These foodstuffs, mainly flour, powdered milk and rice, are used to provide milk and meals for needy school children, and are supplemented by other American gifts of canned food and vitamins. From its kitchens at Hung Hom and Lo Fu Ngam, the Children's Meals Society, incorporating the child feeding schemes of the former Children's Meals Incorporated and the Mennonite Central Committee, provides fourteen and a half thousand heavily subsidized ten cent lunches a day for poor school children in Kowloon and Tsuen Wan. Some past difficulties in raising funds have been due in part to an over-optimistic deduction by a number of oversea contributing agencies from the widely publicized industrial successes of Hong Kong and its attractiveness as a tourist centre. But there is no doubt that some school children are under-nourished, however much the extent may be in scientific dispute because of the lack of specific data. The society has received a temporary subvention from public funds and has now renewed its fund-raising effects. Caritas also operates a school meals programme which last year issued 311,490 meals to about two thousand children in the Aberdeen area, and Lutheran World Service, Church World Service and Caritas between them maintain a total of seven milk distribution centres and four mobile canteens. This welcome emphasis on improving the diet of school children should help them to obtain fuller benefit from their education.
63 While the scale of expenditure on food as a first step in public assistance carries on under the tauter administration described above, demands for emergency relief cannot of course be controlled or even forecast. Disaster relief was discussed in the opening of this chapter, and this minimizes the temporary wretchedness that nature can bring. The Community Relief Trust Fund also continued to assist victims of natural disasters to rebuild their homes and means of livelihood. Cash grants are made, according to a scale approved by the fund's committee, to help needy families who have suffered death or injury or lost their huts, boats or agricultural assets. The annual report of the trustee of this fund is published separately, but its terms of reference and membership also appear in Appendix 4.
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