1960s
A Decade of Turmoil
The 1960s brought the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the start of the Vietnam War. It was a period of maturation for World Relief. We began to understand the limitations of only providing emergency relief in response to disasters – and realized the need to foster long-term development to prevent tragedies and to empower the poor.

In 1961, World Relief’s former chairman, C.N. Hostetter, Jr., served as a member of President Kennedy’s “Food for Peace” committee to help distribute more food to destitute regions of the world. By 1963, World Relief’s feeding stations were serving hot meals daily to more than 57,000 people in Korea. In 1968, food-for-work programs provided meals for 94,000 vulnerable people in Chile.

In 1969, United States Marines in Vietnam turned over the Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital in Da Nang to World Relief. It became our biggest project in Vietnam, providing care for more than 125,000 patients before 1975 when World Relief was forced to evacuate.

1970s
Relief and Hope in the Darkest Hours
Bangladesh’s bloody war for independence produced more than one million casualties and 10 million refugees. World Relief provided emergency supplies to refugees in India and other neighboring countries. In 1972, Pastor Paul Munshi and World Relief established the Christian Service Society in Bangladesh – launching a ministry that continues to help thousands of impoverished families.

During famine years in Africa, World Relief provided food and other aid to the hungry in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Ethiopia and Sudan.

In 1977, World Relief’s feeding centers were supplying 7,000 hot meals a day to malnourished children in Haiti.

In 1979, churches in the United States, mobilized by World Relief, helped resettle the Vietnamese “boat people” – launching World Relief’s church-centered refugee ministry that has since helped more than 200,000 victims of war and persecution start new lives in America.

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