An American Jewish organization has been formed to help suffering non-Jews in Africa, Asia and Central America, it was announced here yesterday at a news conference.
Lawrence Phillips, chairman of the new group, the American Jewish World Service, who is is also the chairman of the Phillips-Van Heusen Corp., said the service was formed because there was no Jewish organization “dealing exclusively with development projects for non-Jews throughout the world.”
The purpose of the organization, he said, and its primary objectives, would be to develop health facilities and peasant agricultural programs. The first project of the organization will be an emergency airlift of a planeload of medical and agricultural supplies to Mozambique, where 100,000 people were reported to have died of famine-related causes last year.
Elie Wiesel, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and a Holocaust survivor, told the news conference that “hunger is one natural disaster that can be helped by man.”
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