15 APRIL 1960, Page 18

IDLE ARTICLES HELP REFUGEES

SIR,---May I draw your readers' attention to a way in which items lying idle in their homes can be made to help World Refugee Year?

Here in Oxford we have run for ten years a gift shop, where all manner of donated articles have been sold for a total of over £100,000. During World Refugee Year, we are making a special appeal for old fountain pens, gold-wire spectacle frames, dis- carded dentures and other seemingly useless items from which small amounts of precious metal can be recovered. About £40 per week is now raised in this way for our work among refugees. I might add that anything saleable can be sold here and we now regard nothing as particularly odd. We have been given everything from books to bicycles, cutlery to cameras—even a houseboat!—Yours faithfully, JOSEPH NUTTY Gift Shop Manager Oxford Committee for Famine Relief 17a Broad Street, Oxford