The Women's Charitable Society of Tripoli

Women's Activity in the Arab World

Her honor the president of the Women's Charitable Society of Tripoli, Mrs. Iqbal Izz al-Din Dhouk, had given the representative of the esteemed Woman's Voice a brief interview in which, for want of time, she was unable to set forth all the sides of the society's activity and take up its various works. Her honor the president has asked me, in my capacity as secretary, to complete what she began; and I am grateful, in the society's name, to the magazine "The Woman's Voice" for opening its pages to the following account:

The Women's Charitable Society of Tripoli was founded in the year 1925, following the end of the first Great War, to relieve the calamities which that war bequeathed and to fight the poverty that had sunk its claws into many Tripoli families after they had lost their men and their providers. The society went its way with sincerity and steadiness, scattering gentle charity upon those families of concealed need, that they might remain able to live with dignity unimpaired, their honor and good name protected. As for the founders of this society, they are the ladies Iqbal Izz al-Din Dhouk, Habiba Alam al-Din Zayni, Durriya Alam al-Din Maghribi, Aziza Dhouk Alam al-Din, Mamdouha Dhouk al-Manla, Yumna Manla, Fatima Manla Ghali, Halima Hasan Adib, Samiha Hasan Na'na'i, and Mufida Adib Sahmarani. The number of members today reaches 175, from all the communities, and the administrative board is composed of the ladies:

Iqbal Dhouk — president
Habiba Alam al-Din Zayni — vice-president
Fatima Manla Ghali — secretary
Mamdouha Dhouk Manla — treasurer

The society went its slow, steady way — though along a path of thorns — striving toward its goal. But it awoke to another charitable project when its eye was caught by the great number of homeless girls and the abundance of dangers besetting them in such surroundings as harsh circumstance had forced upon them. It saw in all Tripoli no shelter to gather in such unfortunates, and it never ceased pondering this weighty project until the difficulties standing in the way of its execution were overcome, and at the beginning of the present year it inaugurated what it named "Dar al-Yatima" — the Orphan Girl's Home. To the orphan girls whose housing and instruction it took upon itself, it then added a number of poor girls, undertaking to teach them as day pupils. Committees of members were elected to manage this orphanage, among them the ladies:

Yumna Manla — directress
Samiha Na'na'i — supervisor
Asma Sbayti — director of handwork

Aziza Alam al-Din, Khalidiya Kabbara, Nasima Kuhayl, Maqbula Dhouk, Mufida Sahmarani — advisers.

The society is now working to widen the circle of its activity in the coming year: to double the number of orphan girls, on the one hand, and to introduce the material improvements that will make of Dar al-Yatima a model shelter in every sense of the word. No obstacle, God willing, shall turn it from its resolve; but it relies, after God Almighty, upon the support of the people, and upon the government — a portion of whose duties the society is carrying, for the fight against poverty and vagrancy, and the raising of the people's level, are among the duties of alert governments.

Our society, in addition to what it does in this charitable field, organizes cultural and moral lectures to raise the level of the Tripoli woman and widen the horizons of her thought.

And it is thinking of realizing other projects, which we hope circumstances will enable it to carry out in true service of the people; and upon God is our reliance.