Toward a Better Society — The Cooperation Club in Beirut

The Cooperation Club in Beirut, a branch of the old world-wide association known as the Y.W.C.A., was founded in 1911. Among its first founders were the late Huda Doumit, and Mesdames Nasima Khouli, Ellen Saad, and Aminah Khoury Makdisi.

The association's first aim was to bring girls up on sound principles. Then, when Lebanon felt the effects of the industrial revolution and of modern developments, the scope of the work widened until it embraced "helping the girl toward mental, spiritual, and bodily growth, without any sectarian bias, and giving woman a social direction founded upon just principles and high ideals." The club branched into several committees whose business is to concern themselves with women out of work and to care for those of them who do work — morally, in matters of health, and materially.

And so it was that, from 1920 onward, there took shape the Munjidat corps, the night schools for women workers in the factories, the summer camps, the employment bureaus, and the advocacy for raising the level of public health.

Alongside this, the club has performed praiseworthy social services which have brought the

country progress. Among them: it studied the conditions of woman at work; it represented the country at several congresses in Europe and America; and it helped turn the government's attention to issuing the labor law and the law on the employment of juveniles.

The club's affairs are run by an administrative committee of 21 members, elected by the rest of the members for a term of three years, the election of a third of them being renewed each year. This committee has an elected president, who today is Mrs. Alice Nassar, wife of Dr. Ibrahim Nassar.

Membership in the club is open to every countrywoman who wishes it. As for the club's funds, before 1927 most of them came from the branch of the Young Women's Christian Association in America; since that date, the club has been able to meet its expenses from members' subscriptions and from the fund-raising campaigns it conducts every year.

The delegate of "The Woman's Voice" visited the club's center in Beirut, where she was received by the rising woman of letters Miss Adma Bayoud, who kindly supplied her with the information we have summarized for our women readers, and with the pictures they see beside these words about the activity of this club — whose social services, performed with sincerity and a true, positive patriotism, we need as much as anything we need.