The Tanourine Charitable Society

The following word reached us from one of the magazine's friends in Tanourine; we publish it with thanks:—

The Tanourine Charitable Society is young in years and great in purpose. It arose and flourished thanks to a gracious lady among the ladies of Tanourine. At the beginning of the summer of 1946, the enterprising founder, Mrs. Zakiya Khoury Harb, cast a general glance over Tanourine's material and moral condition, and saw that it was incumbent upon her — thinking woman that she is — to undertake the creation of a women's charitable society. Two strong motives drove her onward in realizing this honorable idea: the motive of sacrifice in the service of humanity, and the motive of awakening the feeling of the ladies and young ladies of Tanourine and raising their level to the ranks of the rising women of Lebanon. Both motives are worthy of appreciation and admiration.

She drew up the statutes of her society and announced them to the women of Tanourine, where they met with full approval. So the society came to be, and within a short time a select group of the ladies and young ladies of Tanourine joined under its banner.

Its president, Mrs. Khoury, did not wish to feed its charitable fund from subscriptions and donations alone; she wanted, with her companions, to undertake handiwork for the society's material benefit — openwork, embroidery, and knitting — which demands the expenditure of care and the sacrifice of hours, and which adds to the society's annual income extraordinary sums, the fruit of earnestness and steadfastness; and all this she achieved.

A full year of its activity had not passed before the fruit of those efforts ripened, and there accumulated in its fund a sum of money not to be despised. Nor were its works confined to visiting the sick and distributing alms to the poor: they went beyond, to what is greater and nobler, for its president and the senior members resolved to undertake a general charitable project — the erection of a great striking clock in the square of the Tanourine church, after the example of Beirut, Tripoli, and the great Lebanese towns.

There is no doubt that the charitable society of the women of Tanourine deserves thanks and encouragement, and merits praise for the zeal of its devoted president, that it may be able to perform its honorable mission in the service of humanity.