In the Field of Social Service

“The Woman's Voice” published in its last issue an article by the literary Miss Marie Sabri on the projects undertaken by the committee of the National Uplift Project at the American College for Women in Beirut, and especially the campaign this committee waged during the past summer against illiteracy, ignorance, and disease in the village of “Banat Yaacoub” in Akkar.

We are pleased today to publish another comment on this expedition, from the health side, by Dr. Ibrahim Mufarrij, one of the members of the committee. We are also pleased to publish some pictures which may help the reader add to his knowledge of this social movement carried on by our rising generation:

Beyond what woman has done and is doing by way of general reform in the body of social life, we see her today undertaking a higher and nobler work in which her desire for work shows itself. It is as if the theory that a girl's gifts are limited had been cast aside altogether, for our girls today work beside their brother, man, in all fields, with no barriers standing between them — barriers that have been leveled and become a thing of the past.

And when I mention the conscious women's renaissance, I cannot but mention the mighty village uplift project carried out by the girls of the American College in Beirut, “the Junior College.” For it is the important work that the girls were able to accomplish in a short time during their school vacation, breathing the spirit of activity and renewal into the souls of villagers whom fortune had kept from drinking the sciences at their sweet springs.

I shall not speak of how this idea arose, for Miss Marie Sabri touched upon it in her article in the last issue of “The Woman's Voice” magazine. But I wish to say a brief word about the impressions stirred in me by those days I spent contributing, with the members of the village uplift project, two shares of the duty, in helping the people of a remote village of Akkar called “Ain Yaacoub” to raise their educational and health standards.

With my friend Dr. Fouad Haddad I did what could be done to treat the people of that village, knowing that the means of prevention are more important than the treatment of existing diseases; that these means call for a general effort to wipe out germs; and that we can reach no decisive result unless all the people join in taking the measures necessary to fight diseases and prevent their spread. The success of this campaign depends upon the following things:

1 — Raising the standard of health among individuals and groups, by full attention to food, clothing, and rest.

2 — Employing preventive medicine to combat the epidemic diseases, such as typhoid and others.

3 — Directing the people's attention to the importance of physical exercise in the growth of bodies and the refinement of character.

We achieved, with God's help, some success in this campaign of ours, despite the slender means that lay at our disposal. And I must mention those who volunteered to help us in nursing the sick: the Misses Layla Aflatun, Salam Khoury, Marie Atallah, and Dia Abi Rahmeh.

Finally, I must point out that dealing with the health problem in the countryside is no easy matter. The reform we seek will not bring sufficient benefit unless it is general, reaching the villagers with its good through teaching them and training them in how to guard against diseases and to cut off the causes of their spread. And this can only be if we frame the plans of this reform in a practical form that the villagers understand completely. And there is nothing more useful than the rise of many movements like the movement for the uplift of the Lebanese villages carried out by our girls at the American College in Beirut.