Atlanta Woman Recalls CARE Packages: For International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day.

The Atlanta based global organization CARE, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the day by revitalizing one its first initiatives the CARE package.

WABE’s Rose Scott has this story about one Atlanta woman who CARE helped after World War II.

Helga Siegel says she doesn’t remember how or why her family started receiving packages from the United States.

“there was this big surprise which nobody expected from America of all places, for us America seemed like very far away and completely strange country and there was this care package with lovely food in it”

The year was 1946; Helga’s family lived close to Nuremberg in a city called Erlangen.

During the war she recalls the bombs exploding while her family hid in the basement.

Afterwards Helga says the CARE packages helped her family survive.

” it was like a reprieve for us and all the suffering we had been through over the last six years, you know we had very little to eat, in the fact the years right after the war were worse than during the war, there’ s was just no food available what’s so ever”

Helga came to the United States in 1955 as a student.

She’s spent most of her life as a symphony conductor’s assistant and eventually moved to Atlanta.

Helga praises the work of CARE in honor of International Women’s Day:

“they’re helping women to sustain themselves or open small businesses and become strong and you know that way things will change in the world I think”

Rose Scott, WABE news.