'Among these pale-faced boys are tremendous native powers — if it were granted them to burst forth, they would bring marvels...!'
On the borders of Palestine, in southern Lebanon, lies Jdeidet Marjayoun. For that reason it was subjected, before the ordeal of 1948 and after it, to successive waves of refugee caravans, until it grew too narrow for its inhabitants, and those plains and knolls were choked with tents — heaps of human beings in a wretched state of despair, waiting for the ration appointments: to gain a sack of flour, a handful of rice and sugar... and perhaps a garment.
Wretched was the state of things in Jdeidet Marjayoun when, sixteen months ago, there alighted in it an emissary of Bayard Dodge, former president of the American University of Beirut, the friend of the Arabs. She came from America to help the refugees 'positively,' after the failure of the negative
methods in use, and the smallness of their benefit, had become plain to all...
She came down to Marjayoun with a single intention — to open a school that would teach people to rely on themselves. Her hands
were not full of gifts, and so she met with no welcome; glances turned away from her, and it is said she was pelted with stones...
And only 11 girls came to her school — in hope of a new dress!
...But how quickly people saw their error and came apologizing for their obtuseness! How quickly they flocked to her school from the six neighboring villages — women, men, and children; and through them Marjayoun came to know, in consequence, the raising up of an industrial renaissance that will one day be remembered with appreciation and thanks...
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The story of Alma Kerr is the story of the noble, giving woman, carrying a human message to a people not her own — a people beguiled and deceived... a people living its life on the margin: in absolute dependence, on humiliating doles, as though every window of hope had been shut, and no road
Mrs. Alma Kerr
'The furniture of tomorrow,' of iron and straw.
A 'well-known master craftsman' walked from Deir Mimas to Jdeideh to learn the craft... and mastered it!
The flourishing of the shoe industry...
