COMMONWEALTH CO-OPERATION

Taupo Times, Volume 19, Issue 97, 15 December 1970, Page 7

COMMONWEALTH CO-OPERATION

Grants totalling $226,752 to aid Commonwealth co-operation in a variety of professional fields have been announced in London.

They are the latest awards by the four-and-a-half-year-old Commonwealth Foundation, bringing the total grant aid it has provided for this purpose to almost $2,400,000. The main aim of the foundation, an autonomous body financed by 26 Commonwealth governments, is to form and foster panCommonwealth professional associations and to establish multi-professional centres in various parts of the Commonwealth. A grant of $60,000 for the Commonwealth Medical Association will be spread over three years to encourage increased membership and strengthen the associations activities. Another grant spread over three years is $40,000 to help a new multi-professional centre in Jamaica, while $36,000 is being provided for a three-year Commonwealth scientific interchange programme based on the Agricultural Institute of Canada. Other grants include $18,000 to finance a Commonwealth meeting of librarians in London next September with a view to the formation of a Commonwealth Association of Librarians.

An initial grant of $16,400 for the yearv 1971-72 is designed to help the Commonwealth Association of Town Planners and two grants of nearly $10,000 each will help the programme of regional visits or^anised by the New Zealand Postgraduate Medical Federation and assist the Chester Beatty Research Institute with its plans for British-India exchange visits on problems of cancer. Commonwealth engineers will benefit by $8000. The money is being given to ensure widespread attendance at their meeting in London next June. Two sums of $5000 each will help a "workshop" on epilepsy in Uganda and a scientific and technical information university course in Nigeria. Other grants will help such things as a seminar on surveying and land economy in Kenya, architectural research,

the distribution of medical bulletins in the newer Commonwealth countries, nursing co-operation in the Caribbean, the first Asian and Oceania Congress of R'adiology in Australia and the fourth AsiaOceania Congress of Endocrinology in New Zealand. In addition to the grants announced, the foundation's Board of Trustees are considering the allocation of a further $50,000 to the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind for field activities in the Commonwealth.