For Nutrition of Children in War-Stricken Countries

A joint committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization Interim Commission has prepared a "Report on Child Nutrition" for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund.

This report describes the general condition of children in war-stricken countries of Europe and in China. It also specifies principles of nutrition to guide UNICEF in developing its operations. Finally it makes recommendations concerning supplementary feeding of pregnant and nursing women, infants, and older children, and, in an appendix, recommendations on calories and specific

nutrients.

The report is available in the five official languages of the United Nations. Copies are available on request from United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, 405 East Forty-second Street, New York 17, N. Y.

Excerpts from the report will be published in a future issue of The Child.

To Give Graduate Training

in Public Health

Fellowships for 1 year of graduate training in public-health education leading to the master's degree are available under a grant from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Training may be taken in any accredited school of public health with a curriculum in health education leading to a graduate degree. While not specifically intended for training in mental-health education, work in this field may be taken with the approval of the school attended.

An applicant must be a citizen of the United States, or have declared his intention to become one, must have graduated from an approved college or university, with an educational background in the biological sciences, including chemistry, and must have had 3 years of experience or an advanced degree in public health or related fields, such as education, sociology, or welfare. Employees of State, or local health departments are not eligible. The age limit is 22 to 40.

Fellowships provide $100 a month plus tuition. Partial fellowships are

available for veterans, supplementing the amount allowed for maintenance under the GI bill of rights.

Award of fellowships is made by an advisory subcommittee of the Public Health Service Committee on Training of Public Health Personnel. The committee is meeting at monthly intervals, and it is recommended that applications be submitted as soon as possible. Applicants must first be accepted by an approved school of public health before being considered for a fellowship.

Further information may be obtained. by writing to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 120 Broadway, New York 5, N. Y.

Emphasis on Youth

It is significant that the Employment Service Review, monthly publication of the U. S. Employment Service, Department of Labor, devoted its entire May 1948 issue to the young worker entering the labor market.

The issue reveals an encouraging emphasis on youth which characterizes many of the U. S. Employment Service programs and points up the need for special attention to the problems of the young worker just entering the labor market.

The articles cover a wide range of subjects aimed to guide youth in crossing the bridge from school to work. They include practical examples of how schools and industry can maintain strong lines of communication and how schools can train graduates for jobs; an article on counseling, including an article on the counseling needs of rural youth; and one on the part a community program for youth plays in strengthening the efforts of the Employment Servother helpful topics. ice in servicing young people, as well as

FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF

DEATHS OF PREMATURE INFANTS IN THE UNITED STATES, by Ethel C. Dunham, M. D. Federal Security Agency, Social Security Administration, U. S. Children's Bureau. Statistical Series, No. 2. Washington, 1947. 12 pp. Single copies free.

Premature birth takes a higher toll of infant life than any other condition, and it is one of the 10 leading causes of death among the general population of the United States.

Census figures on deaths attributed to premature birth, analyzed in this bulletin, show a decline in such deaths from 1935 to 1944, especially after 1937.

To save premature infants, the author says we must make increased efforts to prevent premature birth; get more detailed information on deaths now assigned to premature birth alone; spread knowledge of and facilities for the special care known to be needed by premature infants; and broaden through research the scope of knowledge in regard to problems of prematurity. THE "FORCE" IN ENFORCEMENT, by Lazelle D. Alway. IllusNational trated by Ruth Senne. Child Labor Committee, 419 Fourth Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. 9 pp. Mimeographed. Free.

Group study of child-labor laws and their enforcement becomes easy with the help of this pamphlet, which raises the questions that need to be asked, tells how to get the answers, and suggests what people can do to help support good child-labor laws and their enforcement.

The pamphlet lists other resource material on child-labor laws and standards available, free of charge from the National Child Labor Committee and from the Child Labor Branch, Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions, U. S. Department of Labor.

July 18-24-First Inter-American Conference on Rehabilitation of the Crippled and Disabled. Mexico City, Mexico. Sponsored by the International Society for the Welfare of Cripples, in cooperation with the Mexican Government.

Aug. 11-13-International Association of Governmental Labor Officials. Charleston, W. Va.

Aug. 12-21-International Congress on Mental Health. London, England. Aug. 23-27-International Congress on Population and World Resources in Relation to the Family. Cheltenham, England. Auspices of Family Relations Group of Great Britain.

Photographic credits:

Cover, Esther Bubley for Children's Bureau.

Page 2, Freida Zylstra for Chicago Tribune.

Page 3, Bernard Ravitz for Brooklyn Children's Aid Society.

Page 4, Library of Congress photograph, by Russell Lee.

Page 6, courtesy of the author, Sigrid Larsson, R. N.

Page 8, Roy Perry for Children's Aid Society of New York.

Page 11, Philip Bonn for Children's Bureau.

Page 13, Library of Congress photograph, by John Collier.

As this issue of The Child reaches our readers, an international commission is in London, analyzing some 300 studies of human relations, studies made during the course of the past year or so in countries all over the world.

All this is in preparation for the International Congress on Mental Health, which will meet at London in August. The congress believes, with UNESCO, that "since wars begin in the minds of men it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed."

For though understanding is no guaranty of peace, there can be no lasting peace until there is understanding.

In accordance with this idea, the studies, made by small groups meeting informally, are planned by the congress as steps toward a world effort for better understanding among peoples.

The congress comprises three conferences, two of which are on technical psychiatric problems. The third, the International Conference on Mental Hygiene, is not a meeting for psychiatrists only, but for all types of profes

sional workers interested in the social sciences.

Some of those attending will be psychiatrists; others will be anthropologists, sociologists, clergymen. Educators, including nursery-school teachers, will be there; also pediatricians and general medical practitioners; as well as nurses, social workers, and many others. The work of this conference will be based on the reports and recommendations from the small groups, or preparatory commissions.

Like the conference itself, these small groups are made up of representatives of different professions interested in the social sciences. Many readers of The Child-professional workers in some field concerned with children-are members of one or another of these groups.

The preparatory commissions all over the world have reported on subjects covering a wide range, but all converge on one central idea. This idea is that human beings can learn to get along with one another-in the family, in the industrial establishment, in the nation, and in the world.

Many of the preparatory commissions did not go out of existence after sending their reports to London. They found their discussions so stimulating and valuable that they are continuing to meet. Some of them will undoubtedly contribute valuable material to the planning for the Midcentury White House Conference, to be held in 1950.

Dedicated to the proposition that peoples can live together in peace, the International Congress will work toward what Brock Chisholm calls "the planned development of a new kind of human being, who can live at peace with himself and his fellow men."

Dr. Chisholm believes that this can be done "if, at the International Congress on Mental Health, even a few principles of mental health, even a few signposts for the bringing up of children, even a little hope for a sorely beset and anxious world can be agreed on by qualified people from all over the world."

Katharine 7. Leurook

Chief, Children's Bureau

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1948

T

HE Day family of New Haven, Conn., packed their belongings and joined the wartime migrant families of the country in 1942, when Dr. Harry Luther Day was commissioned in the Army.

In the next 2 years they traveled from one airfield to another, through 14 States. But they traveled a far greater distance than actual miles, over a long, long road from their secure New England moorings back to raw, primitive prejudices and discriminations exposed in the churning populations of warborn communities.

Mrs. Day and the children found themselves migrants, among the 6,000,000 other migrants created by war, living in unsavory quarters because there was no other place to be found, in crowded housing projects, or trailer camps. This New Haven family was one small fragment of America-America in the crucible of change, becoming aware of some of its own weaknesses and searching for new strengths.

When, in 1944, her husband was sent overseas, Mrs. Day and her three children came back to their home in New Haven.

Gertrude Hart Day looked about her at her own neighborhood, her own community, with a fresh eye of observation. At her very doorstep could be found many of the tangled problems to which she and her children had been exposed. People within a stone's throw were subjected to prejudice and intolerance because they were "different."

If changes were to take place, Mrs. Day felt, the logical starting point was right in her own neighborhood. Earlier experience as a social worker stood her in good stead. She sought out others, in the parent-teacher association to which she belonged, in the churcheswherever groups were to be found—and

invited them to talk things over. At first only a handful came, meeting in one another's homes. As they considered some of the things they might do together as a neighborhood group, barriers of racial and religious differences gradually disappeared, particularly as the group centered upon what they could do for children.

How the project grew

The first need was for a playgroundthere was little space for the children to play after school. The neighborhood group found a yard that had once been a playground, pooled their resources and got the cooperation of the board. of education in equipping it for use.

The informal group then became a neighborhood council. They moved from filling one simple need, upon which all agreed, to another. The next thing was a nursery school, which they called the Neighborhood Nursery School. They organized it on an interracial basis. The equipment and setting were simple; the school set up in a family home.

But from the beginning the educational standards were high. The staff was carefully chosen, with advice from the Clinic of Child Development of the Yale University School of Medicine and from the New Haven State Teachers College. It was a good nursery school and has continued on the highest educational level.

From that small beginning, within a single neighborhood, gradually has developed what is known as the New Haven Neighborhood Project. It has taken that name because all its activities are carried out on a neighborhood basis (a neighborhood being recognized as a grouping of some 1,800 persons living within natural boundaries). The project now includes three nursery schools

(a fourth is to be opened in the fall, and a fifth is in prospect); a summer play school for older children; a book proj ect, with reading and study groups; an three neighborhood councils sponsoring a variety of activities.

It has become a significant experiment in building understanding among people of different races and faiths and breaking down prejudice, with children as the starting point. After about a year and a half the experiment was taken under the sponsorship of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

The project is a try-out of democracy at the level of the neighborhood and the community. While its basic motivation is building fellowship and tolerance among people of different races, this em phasis is never deliberately imposed The children lose sight of the fact that a favorite playmate's skin is dark. He rates because he can build a good block, house or tell exciting stories. Contact in normal situations brings understanding.

In the summer play school last year 80! children swam and hiked and played together. They represented 16 different nationality backgrounds; three races, white, Negro, and Asiatic; and the three major religious faiths in this country. Many of the white children never before had come face to face with Negro children of their own economic background; 80 percent of them never had mingled and played with them. The Christian and Jewish children, although meeting in school, had rarely mingled outside of it. But they forgot, as they had fun together, that skins were white or black or yellow, or religious faiths different.

Not only are the roots of this community experiment deeply embedded in the neighborhood, but in most of the activi

DEP SIT D BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

gether, mending broken toys or painting battered furniture, differences disappear. People find themselves knit together around common needs.

More, in fact, has been done for the parents than for the children in this New Haven experiment. Children have a way of accepting each other. With them it is a matter of building a better tomorrow of tolerance and understanding.

The nursery school itself is an educational laboratory. Not only do children of different racial groups attend, but exceptional children are included so that their problems may be studied and mothers helped to bring about adjustments. It is hoped to expand this work if funds can be secured for the special staff required.

The supervisor of all the nursery schools is a capable Jewish mother, deeply interested in the project from the outset. One of the staff members of the Neighborhood Nursery School is a Negro, a gifted musician, well-trained for teaching, and with a rare understanding of children.

The other two nursery schools are in quite different settings and sections of the city; this has definite advantages for the experimental purposes of the proj

ect. One is in a housing project, Farnum Courts, in a neighborhood of mixed racial groups. The other, Summerfield Nursery School, is in a church-owned building in a modest neighborhood. It belongs to the people in a very special way. The young people of the church mended and painted the furniture and equipment. The men painted the walls and the women made curtains and provided some of the equipment. Local merchants donated rugs and other furnishings. While both these schools have simple settings and equipment, the supervisory and teaching staffs are of the same high grade as in the Neighborhood Nursery School.

In the fall a new venture, it is hoped, will be a nursery school in a public school. The principal has invited the experiment and the school authorities are carefully considering it. If undertaken it will represent pioneering in a fresh field, and if it proves practical and successful may make educational history in New Haven and the State. The project members have their hopes high.

There is a move to start a fifth nursery school in-a fire house! That would truly be an adventure. Going to school under the same roof with realfor-sure fire engines and firemen heroes would make any 3- or 4-year-old the envy of his peers.

The nursery schools are open 3 days a week. A day at home between school days is looked upon as having definite advantages, and it meets the objections of those who feel that young children should not be too much away from parental care.

Each of the nursery schools is related to a whole pattern of neighborhood situations and, even more broadly, intermeshes with community situations. The New Haven project schools are fortunate in having the resources of the Clinic of Child Development of the Yale University School of Medicine, the pediatrics department of the same school, and the Department of Education of Yale. When personnel are considered, guidance is sought from these sources, and they are continually drawn upon for consultation.

Close relationship also is maintained with the New Haven State Teachers College and the local council of social agencies, the appropriate agencies being appealed to when problems in their