Proclamation 4053—Voluntary Overseas Aid Week and Human Development Month

During this month of May 1971, we take grateful note of the twenty-five years of constructive leadership provided by the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid.

United States voluntary agencies, working in close association with the Advisory Committee, have through the years given needed assistance to promote economic and social development in over one hundred countries of the world.

The International Walk for Development, which has recently taken place, focused on the need to continue humanitarian assistance and economic development through voluntary action.

It is fitting that we commend the good will of the people of our country, manifested by our overseas programs of development and relief, and the humanitarian work and interest of these nonprofit service organizations.

To this end, the Congress has requested the President to designate the week beginning May 9, 1971, as Voluntary Overseas Aid Week and the month of May 1971 as Human Development Month.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week beginning May 9, 1971, as Voluntary Overseas Aid Week and the month of May 1971 as Human Development Month.

I request the appropriate agencies of the Federal Government, and I urge all our people, to observe that week and month with activities which will give merited prominence to the significant contributions which our voluntary agencies are making to the well-being of peoples in other lands.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eleventh day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-fifth.

RICHARD NIXON