A Visit to the Orphans' Home...

The Orphans' Home is a cultural and charitable institution, one of those gathered under the banner of "the Public Waqfs of the Banu Ma'ruf Community," whose administration is undertaken, and whose advancement is tended, by the wise administrator Mr. Aref al-Nakadi.

Over these waqfs there presides this great personality, endowed with principles and devotion of the loftiest order, and with a sincerity of resolve and a firmness of judgment that rise to a rare height.

Through the efforts and activity devoted to them, these waqfs have attained a standing that mounts ever higher with the passing of the days, and have realized aims that keep pace with the demands and the necessities of the times.

You may be drawn to make your way to Abey, to that lofty hilltop where you look out upon an enchanting view commanding the coast and the sea, and where some of these works are settled — among them: the Dawoodiyya College for boys, the Dawoodiyya School for girls, the vocational school for orphans (boys), and then the home for the aged.

In Beirut are settled the Orphans' Home institution and the Ma'niyya School, and soon a school of cutting and sewing, inspired in all its branches and appointments by modern method.

As for the Ladies' Committee of the Orphans' Home, it is a charitable body founded in 1941, when an elite of Druze ladies summoned one another to a general meeting and formed a working bloc under the name of the Ladies' Committee for the Orphans' Home. Its boards have succeeded one another according to the rules of its statutes, all of them diligent in gathering money and in growing this project — through subscriptions, the holding of parties, a charity bazaar, and appeals to the open-handed among residents and emigrants — cooperating with the trustee of the waqfs in bearing the burdens of this responsibility. They achieved what they wanted; and from this generous cooperation came the good fruit of the project's progress, so that today this institution shelters within its walls 215 orphans, whom the fates had flung into the bitter clutches of orphanhood, and for whom Divine Providence then prepared experienced hearts that shield them from the cruelty of time and lead them to cut their road through life with courage, strength, and faith.

The ladies' board of the Orphans' Home is composed of:
Amina Arslan, Edma Joumblatt, Almas al-Duwayk, Zahiyya Arslan, Suad Takieddine, Ayda Assaf, Layla Najjar, May Muzher, Nazik Abdel-Malek.

The institution was recently visited by the great emigrant and open-handed man of wealth Sheikh Qablan Makari, who admired the efforts he found expended, and was gladdened by the precision and order he observed throughout the institution. The whole school welcomed him, and the orphans cheered him loudly, striking to the very core of his heart; and his generous soul poured forth its giving, and then the promise of what will follow it in the future.

Blessed be efforts that draw their blessing from the fount of goodness and so live; and blessed be a nation that bends in kindness over humane works, to embrace the sorrow of deprivation, to pour mercy into the heart of the wretched, and to shed tenderness over his orphanhood.