# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S658
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Units for Europe :.
_* By September of 1947 the Emergency Planning Council relief
office activities had reached large proportions. Shipments of clo
ing, food, medicines, spiritual literature, orphans’ care, chil
feeding programs, were in Progress at an accelerated pace. To:
enable our people to assist all the more in their labor of love and }
to meet the ever-increasing need abroad, a “Units for Europe”.1
rogram was launched throughout Synod. This program supported |
six phases of relief work in which our Church was active — food, |
clothing, medicine, orphans’ care, a child-feeding program, and q
spiritual relief. One “unit” of $7.50 provided assistance to these %
six phases of relief in a proportionate measure. 4
' Launched in early October, this “units” program met ready
response from our people. A file of 40,000 screened (bona fide)
names of needy families abroad was quickly established for ‘the
flood of food packages provided by our people through their .
$7.50 unit contributions. So generous was the response that the 4
Emergency Planning Council office by necessity was compelled at .
times to mail as high as 20,000 eleven-pound food packages per week:

Food Packages

__ Millions. throughout Europe were for years forced to sustain 4
themselves with food rations of 1,300 to 1,700 calories per day. What j
our food packages, more than 275,000 of them, meant to people in j
shattered and ruined countries, is beyond words. One cannot write 4
on paper or express by word of mouth what but a pound of fats, 4
shipped in our food packages, has meant to people who faced 4
uncertainty of life, whose families were lost, and whose existence
was on the verge of starvation for years. 3

At the outset of the Emergency Planning Council food-
package program two. kinds of packages were shipped to Europe—
$4.50 and $6.00. Within a relatively short time the Council sent
over 180,000 of these eleven-pound packages filled with food and
vitamins, to the stricken in Europe. 4

After this first avalanche of food had been sent across, the 4
Emergency Planning Council restricted its facilities to the shipping
of only such food packages as were paid for by American donors.
But even then 65,859 eleven-pound_ food packages were shipped }
in 1948, and 16,000 in 1949. Since June of 1948 the Emergency
Planning Council packing facilities in St. Louis were discontinued.
because a Danish export company offered to pack choice European -
foods at a considerable saving. This saving of postage and handling |
charges enabled the Emergency Planning Council to give donors “
even more food value for the cost of every package. .

For the last triennium the Emergency Planning Council spent 4