World Vision

As thousands of U.S. troops headed toward Somalia on Sunday, Southern California relief workers voiced the hope that intensified scrutiny of the Somali crisis will boost donations for the drought-ravaged nation. "When we first began to shift our attention to what was happening in Somalia, we had a spurt of donations, but that had dropped off," said Barbara Wilks, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Red Cross.

Four young survivors of December's Soviet Armenia earthquake joined members of the Los Angeles Armenian community and World Vision Inc. on Tuesday to thank Dr. Armand Hammer for rushing medical equipment and supplies to the devastated region. At a Beverly Hilton luncheon, 16-year-old Anna Mikaelian, who was buried in the rubble and lost both legs, gave the Los Angeles oilman a clock that had stopped at 11:41 a.m.--the time the quake struck on Dec. 7. She and the other three children at the luncheon have been undergoing medical treatment in Los Angeles for several months.

Last year Robert Seiple returned to Vietnam for the first time since his tour of duty as a U.S. Marine combat pilot ended in 1968. Seiple went back last April as president of World Vision, a Monrovia-based Christian relief organization, to arrange for the agency's return to Vietnam, 13 years after it had been expelled by the government. During that visit, Seiple said he saw a nation that was poverty-stricken and in disrepair, largely because of almost unabated strife.

Ethiopian famine stories are unwinding again, like awful replays from a bad tape reel. It's a tape that Paul Thompson can play over and over in his head, even as he sits in the relative comfort of his home in a cul-de-sac in El Toro. As executive director of the World Vision Relief Organization, a subsidiary of World Vision--based in Monrovia in Los Angeles County--Thompson is in the business of famine relief. And unfortunately, once again in Ethiopia, business is good.

Disaster relief agencies, still recovering from the enormous task of supplying aid to Mexican earthquake victims, began marshaling assistance Thursday for Colombians who saw their families, farms and homes washed away by volcanic mud and overflowing rivers. One of those agencies, World Vision International, which is still aiding the stricken in Mexico and Ethiopia, had its own dead to mourn.

A team of construction workers and church members have labored for five months to rebuild parts of the earthquake-damaged La Trinidad Church in San Fernando, a task made difficult by inadequate supplies. But thanks to a shipment of building materials that will be donated by World Vision U. S. early next week, La Trinidad and 12 other churches and charities in the San Fernando Valley will be able to work full-force on their renovation projects.

Avery's implication--left unchallenged--is that a worldwide surplus of food solves world hunger. That simply is not true. In reality, there is a huge reservoir of nearly 500 million people around the globe, due to inadequate production, distribution and storage of food in Third World nations. Consider: --While American farmers will harvest another bumper crop this year, farmers in many Third World countries will not produce enough food to provide for their own. And because transportation is, in most cases, too expensive or non-existent, their governments will not be able to make good use of available surpluses.

Five years ago, Mohammed Said abandoned his barren farm and made the three-hour trip by foot to the relief center in Ethiopia's Ansokia Valley. The famine that was ravaging the country had claimed the lives of his child, his mother and his father-in-law. And it almost claimed his. Said had to be fed for six months before he could muster the strength to leave the camp, with a dairy cow and a loom, given to him by relief center workers to start his life anew.