The First Lady of Lebanon lays the cornerstone of the two schools and presents a radio-phonograph for teaching the children patriotic anthems — Emile Bustani gives a thousand liras yearly

It was on Monday, August 5, that the Village Welfare Society held a delightful festival at Manasef, in the Chouf, to lay the cornerstone of a school unique of its kind in Lebanon — a school of fundamental education in the village of al-Kniseh — which it has called the school of household management.

The story of this school is a Lebanese story — the story of the remote villages, astonished by the hands of the city and of civilization, feeling the spirit of the renaissance stirring in their veins. Three small villages — Deir Kousheh, al-Kniseh, and Amiq — donate broad lands to the Village Welfare Society so that the Society may build its school — this school which for a year past has been housed in two tents, braving the heat of summer and the cold of winter.

The Reconstruction Department answered the appeal of the Village Welfare Society and supplied it with the design and the building materials, while the Society supplied the land and the strong arms of the people of the three villages. There was intense enthusiasm the day they learned that the First Lady of Lebanon would lay the cornerstone with her own hand. For the first time in the history of this region a festival of this kind was held and great personages visited the region, so the people vied with one another in offering facilities and preparations.

The president of the Society, Mrs. Anissa Najjar, opened the ceremony with a speech in which

she recalled the activity of these villages, the aims of the Society, and the pattern of its work. She said that it intends to join the six villages of Manasef in a cooperative association for production and marketing, on the day when these villages are left to manage their own affairs by themselves.

She then spoke of the necessity of cooperation between the government and the private organizations, and welcomed the presence of the Honorable Director of Agriculture, Alfred Chamoun; the delegate of the Ministry of National Education, Mr. Said Bustani; the delegate of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Mr. Maarouf Sweid; the Director of the Reconstruction Department, Mr. Emile Bustani; and the

members of the Department, as a first step toward this idea.

Finally she presented to the First Lady of Lebanon the names of those who had cooperated for the revival of the Manasef center: Mesdames Zalfa Rawda, president of the center; Nadbah al-Rifai; Adelaide Rishani; Shafiqa Janji; and the center's energetic teacher, Alice Maalouf. And the donors of the land, at their head the mukhtar of al-Kniseh, Mr. Youssef Majid Saad, Mr. Gerges Ashkouti, and Messrs. Naim and Neameh Abi Nader. Mr. Raji Ashkouti was singled out for a word of