The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 267

CALENDAR CALENDAR USA FOR AFRICA: A SHIFT BACK TO THE USA By DENNIS McDOUGAL TAFT, "They was here and then was they was beautiful, gone," them said all June together Sketo. and "It singing." The way she talked, the grandmotherly manager of the Taft Salvation Army Thrift Store on Center Street might have been' discussing last year's fashionable compassion for African famine victims. But no. From the store's front window she was marveling at how quickly 100 celebrities could come in a convoy of Greyhound Americruisers into her dusty San Joaquin Valley oil town, hold hands with 1,200 common townsfolk for a few hours of filming, then, vanish back to Hollywood. Throughout the daylong do on a Saturday last weekend, no stars stopped by the store, which helps feed and pay gas bills for the poverty- -stricken of Taft and other central California towns.

we've got 'em here. I guess there's homeless people just about everywhere," she said.) Two of the moving forces behind USA for Africa- -Ken Kragen and his starry client, Kenny Rogers -plan to change that this year. They started putting their plan into action in Taft when they rolled in to make a three-minute TV commercial and then departed nearly as quickly as last year's celebrated -star sing-along (a year ago this Tuesday). That time, it was to save starving Ethiopian babies. That's all right with June Sketo.

America has its starving too. The singing outside her store was "just beautiful," she kept repeating. Diana Ross, Rogers and dozens of other stars were kept segregated from Taft most of the day. Star singers practiced inside the Skate Escape roller rink while townsfolk practiced three blocks away in the Fox movie theater. Celebrities inside the skating rink ate a catered lunch -pit barbecue sirloin tips and apple pie, from Leonard's of Taft), while town residents lined up outside for free Cokes and hot dogs.

But they finally did get together for an egalitarian hour of singing on the streets of Taft, although the song was not "We Are the World." While he hopes to pick up that perennial hit's sales following next month's Grammy Awards, USA for Africa founder Ken Kragen has shifted the focus of his foundation away from Africa in 1986. The song this day was new, "Hands Across America." According to Kragen, just as "We Are the World" was the famine anthem last year, this one is a sure-fire hit, destined to be this year's -hunger theme song, even with sentimental lyrics like: LOS ANGELES THE FAMINE: EMERGENCY IS STILL THERE To, isn't According Virginia, over. to the projections famine in released Africa last week by the United Nations Office of Emergency Operations in Africa, about 19 million will continue to get sick, starve and thirst in 1986. The worst fear stated by relief officials is that the shifting focus of both the media and rock charities like USA for Africa from the African famine to America's homeless could obliterate progress that has been made in places like Ethiopia during the past year. "I have a certain apprehension, yes," said UNICEF special projects director Peter Hansen of USA for Africa's upcom- ing Hands Across America project and other show business efforts springing up this winter to help hungry Americans.

While domestic hunger programs are laudable, Hansen said, he openly fears that "beating the emergency drum is going to make us face compassion fatigue. People are going to start turning off to a picture of a dying child." Hansen is not alone in his apprehensions. Officials with agencies like the International Red Cross and the U.N. High Commission on Refugees also are anxious. UNHCR representative Nicholas Van Praag made a pilgrimage to Holly- 1986 Emergency Aid Needed for Africa NIGER $26 million MAURITANIA $35 million ANGOLA $50 million saja8uy I $51 million MOZAMBIQUE soT Source: U.N.

Estimates "This sky so felt the kiss of countless this earth that smells so us all in its great heartbeat." Kragen, 48, manager of Rogers and Lionel Richie, is figuring that some 6 million Americans will pay $10 each to stand in a -to-coast line May 25 and sing "Hands Across America." The Taft commercial -celebrities swaying hand-in-hand with middle-class America in joyous song to raise $100 million for America's needy- -was scheduled to debut today in the Super Bowl pregame show. (At press time Thursday, USA for Africa officials abandoned "Hands Across America" for some unstated reason in favor of "We Are the World." Taft residents will still be swaying in the Super Bowl commercial, but wood last week specifically to encourage Ken Kragen and USA for Africa officials not to shun Africa now that they have turned the spotlight on America's poor. "People who do not see the daily statistics will see USA for Africa, Live Aid and Band Aid saying that things are getting better. And they are," Hansen said. "But it is not over." The recurring dread among veteran relief officials like Hansen and Van Praag is that high levels of high profile, celebri-studded concentration on the hunger issue could cause a public backlash and actually reduce anti -famine giving.

"What happens is that there is such a level of anxiety created with this emergency aura that, a year down the line, there is this major let down and people MAURITANIA SUDAN ETHIOPIA NIGER Africa ANGOLA MOZAMBIQUE say, 'I already Hansen said. The USA for Africa- -Live Aid- Band Aid efforts obviously helped. The total number of famine victims who will need emergency food and medicine this year dropped by 10 million from 1985. U.N. officials credit much of the turnaround to increased rainfall and rock charity's publicity.

But the devastation -particularly in the East African nations of Ethiopia and -seems far from over. According to the U.N., Ethiopia alone will need $537 million in aid just to meet its emergency needs this year; $296 million of that will go toward actual food shipments. The Marxist -governed nation that be- they won't be singing.) Mrs. Sketo was pleased that USA for Africa's camera eye has come around to America's homeless and hungry rather than those half a globe away in the wastelands of Africa: "I'm for helping people but I think we should help people at home first," she said. "This doesn't mean we're forgetting about Africa," Kragen said a couple days earlier to a packed press at West Hollywood's nifty Le Bel Age Hotel.

He called it the official "kick -off" buffet bash for Hands Across America. He said he wanted to emphasize that his organization would continue to earn and spend money on Africa. (According to USA for Africa figures came the first focus of the rock charity campaign has been wracked by civil and border wars as well as drought. The easing of both the famine and its own political strife has triggered one of the largest mass migrations in Ethiopia's history: 63,000 have returned to their homelands in northern Ethiopia from the Sudan and, in the south, a staggering 570,000 have come back to Ethiopia from Somalia in recent months, according to U.N. statistics.

In the Sudan, the emergency price-tag this year will be $154 million. Many Ethiopian refugees have returned to their homes in the northern Ethiopian provinces of Eritrea and Tigray, but another 496,000 have not. They still live in eastern Sudanese relief camps and require food and health care. And the list continues: Mozambique will need $51 million in aid, Angola $50 million, Mauritania $35 million and Niger $26 million. Last week U.N.

officials asked USA for Africa to come up with $2.25 million to ship emergency grain to the western Sudan, where as many as a million people are facing starvation. USA for Africa executive director Marty Rogol said last week that his agency would oblige, even though it would temporarily exhaust the special "rapid response" fund that USA for Africa sets aside for emergency aid. Rogol said that the foundation board of directors voted Tuesday to replenish its $2 million "rapid response" fund with money earmarked for long-term construction projects. He said that would assure that emergency money will remain available the USA for Africa coffers. "I can't say Hands Across America is a mistake," Hansen said.

"The problem of homeless and hungry in the U.S. exists. "But it is a danger for agencies like us, and USA for Africa, to cry wolf too many times. It's up to us to present an intelligent case, not just an emotional one. "The main thing is that the problems caused over the past 10 years in Africa are not going to be solved in 18 months," said Hansen.

"People have been eating their seeds. So the rains have returned, but they have nothing to plant." LIGNONd MIAVA SUDAN $154 million ETHIOPIA $537 million released last week, the foundation had taken in $42.5 million and spent $13.5 million. One month before, the foundation had only spent $7.3 million.) For the moment, even Marty Rogol, USA for Africa executive director, conceded that the famine spotlight has shifted to America. He defends the shift. It is a practical and clever way of keeping fickle Middle America focused on the fundamental issue of ending hunger by the year 2000, he said.

"The issue is hunger and whatever way we can raise people's awareness is important, whether it's here or in Africa," he said. "The issue of hunger has been at the forefront of people's consciousness now for about 14 months. With Hands Across America, we Please Turn to Page 4 SUNDAY, JANUARY 26, 3.