News of the Women's Union

* The Political Committee of the Lebanese Women's Union stated that the Legislative Committee of the Chamber of Deputies had proposed granting woman her right in the municipal council, and that the government had rejected the rest of woman's political demands. Upon this statement a peaceful women's demonstration took place, and the ladies presented a petition demanding woman's full right to the office of the President of the Chamber of Deputies.

* The Women's Union resolved that its members should support every candidate for the Chamber of Deputies whose platform includes support of woman's political right.

* The Union commended the Health Committee for its valuable services to the city and its activity in its work.

* The Committee for the Uplift of the Village Woman reported that it has selected the following villages: Baalmshiyeh, Ain al-Muwaffaq, Ras al-Ballut, al-Hilaliyah, and Harat Hamzah, to be the nucleus of its work. The villages named are without electricity, school, doctor, nurse, or licensed midwife. The project requires a thousand Lebanese liras, apart from the dispensary, which the Red Cross will be asked to undertake; and the inhabitants of the villages named have contributed the building and some of its furnishings.

* The Women's Union has begun selling tickets for the tea dance it will hold on the fifth of May 1951; the ticket sells at seven Lebanese liras a person, and the proceeds of this party will go to serve the Union's various projects. On this occasion the Lebanese airline company donated a prize: a round-trip ticket on its lines in the Arab countries. The conditions for winning this prize will be announced shortly. The Union thanks the Lebanese airline company for this handsome gesture, and thanks Dr. Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, who wished the company's donation to be worth far more than the value of the tickets presented to it.

* Al-Nahda An-Nisaiyah of Zahle has reopened its kindergarten after a winter holiday that lasted three months. It is the first school in Lebanon to follow this system, prompted by the severity of the cold in January, February, and March and the difficulty of the children's going back and forth between home and school, and also by the parents' desire that the children should flock to the kindergarten in the summer months, to roam and play within its walls and in its playground, safe from the dust of the street and the burning heat of the sun. It will open its cultural season with monthly lecture gatherings that will have a fine echo and the benefit that is awaited.

* The British Cultural Institute invited the ladies active in the social and cultural renaissance in Beirut to a tea party held to introduce Mrs. Mary Buchan, a visitor to Beirut and the East and secretary of the international institution in Switzerland, the "Stauntree" children's village. After tea and introductions, the company listened to the gracious visitor deliver a fine lecture on women's work in Britain, enumerating the important women's associations with a brief sketch of their aims and their work. She spoke finally of this model village in Switzerland, which cares for orphans from the ages of 7 to 16 from all the European countries and teaches the various crafts together with the sciences, so that the pupil is trained to rely on himself and earn his living when he leaves the institution. The company left the Institute, every tongue giving thanks for this opportunity of hearing this famous visitor, and with a keen longing that we in the Middle East might have a model village like it, to care for the children and orphans of the Arab countries.