The Girl Reserves in Jbeil, and the Activities of the University Women's Union

★ In the December programs of the Girl Reserve troops of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), made up of schoolgirls, was the preparing of a number of gifts to be sent to certain needy children. So the troops decided to send two hundred gifts to one of the orphanages in Jbeil, the “Bird's Nest.” A representative was chosen from each troop in the Ahliah National College, the American School for Girls, the National Evangelical School, and the English College; they took the gifts to Jbeil, visited the school and the orphanage, and presented what they had brought to the little children.

As for the gifts, the girls gathered part of them and bought the rest — sweets and toys — out of the small profits they had earned from selling greeting cards before the holiday.

★ The “University Women's Union” began its activity this year by extending an invitation to a company of women and men of thought in Lebanon and the Arab countries to deliver a series of lectures in the hall of the Cénacle Libanais. The invitation was accepted by a group of men and women of letters, among them Mr. Fouad Ephrem Boustani, president of the Lebanese University; Dr. Doria Shafik of Egypt; Mrs. Inayat Ramzi of Damascus; Mrs. Sabiha al-Sheikh Daoud of Iraq; Mrs. Amina al-Said of Egypt; Mrs. Widad Maqdisi Cortas; and Dr. Kamal al-Hajj and Dr. Najib Sadaka of Lebanon.

This series of lectures will treat the thorny problems that confront university girls in the Arab countries, and will try to find positive solutions for them...

The series began on Friday, January 22, in the hall of the Ministry of Education.

The hall was packed with leading thinkers and men of letters, and the ceremony opened with a speech by Dr. Zahia Kaddoura in which she spoke of the Union and its aims and the duties of university women in Lebanon — published elsewhere in this issue.

Then Miss Ihsan Dimashqiya delivered the Union's address, a brief word on the individual in society, the history of the Union, and the aims by which it seeks to raise woman's cultural and social level.

After her, Mr. Fouad Ephrem Boustani delivered his lecture on the Arab countries he had lately visited, giving a precise description of the countries' geography and their social and economic condition.

He had visited the schools of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Baghdad, built in the newest style and rivaling the schools of Europe. He admired the renaissance he found there, and the open-heartedness of these countries' sheikhs and emirs, and the affection they bear the Lebanese. Among what the lecturer said was that these countries are, for us Lebanese, today what America was yesterday; and the emigrant to them need only adorn himself with two things: culture and beauty of character.

And he was so precise in his description that he was able to carry his hearers from Lebanon to the Arab countries, to live with him the memories of what he saw and met with there.