The YWCA Campaign — A Million Liras... for the Youth of Tomorrow

Our children, who look out upon a world of bewilderment, doubt, and instability...

Our girls, upon whom it has been imposed that they share with their brothers in only the very least...

The adolescent girls among them — each one looks at herself and sees neither the artless child nor the grown woman, and stands questioning between the two...

This strange medley with which our society teems, which our eyes see at home, in the street, and at school — what have we done for its sake, that it may live its life as the best that living can be, and set out upon the paths of truth and of building?...

There is the home, we say; but how many are the houses in which all the needs of children and adolescents — and even of grown young women — are provided? And we point our finger at the school and cry: Here!...

But the aware observer soon falls back in disappointment!...

This discordant mixture we call a school still — save for the very few — sets the program above your child's head, so that he walks as if under a heavy nightmare... The concern of our schools is the book and the dry — more often than not odious — subject matter; it pays no heed, then, to these dynamic creatures in whom life clamors, in whose breasts hope and youth ring out in ululation...

These are our children; and an aware handful of our society is thinking of them in a new way, and working to help them, for the sake of their lives... And the Young Women's Christian Association has taken the broadest step in this field.

The step began thirty-seven years ago, when the association was a small [...], living on the help of its mother in the United States; but this kernel soon became an independent tree, in 1947, when its own resources and the donations coming in to it sufficed for the annual expenses laid out upon its network of many projects.

The first of these projects is spiritual, educational, and health guidance [...] the women of this country in all their varied leanings; in this it follows the maxim that "no nation can rise above the level of its women; if we raise woman, the country rises and ascends."

The number of women who have taken part in the association's activity from its founding until now reaches 96,772, among them the girl-guide troops distributed through most of the girls' institutes in the capital, whose aim is to guide adolescent girls and train them in leadership, in work with the group, and in the bearing of responsibility. There is another club for the girls who work in the factories, where they meet to exchange views and to organize programs of profitable recreation...

The association has founded three evening schools in three quarters of the capital, to fight illiteracy; as for the women employees, they gather at intervals to discuss the problems that face them in life and work, and to collect the money that is spent on feeding needy children at the summer camp, and on sending the association's delegates to international congresses.

The association goes on encouraging industry, studying the social problems that face our women, and working to lighten them; and it moves in this field with practical steps: it has created an employment bureau for women, a residence for girl students, and a camp opened every summer at Dhour el-Choueir, to solve one of the great problems of recreation for children and adolescents; and this same camp receives children in want of feeding and health care, and returns them to their families restored to health.

After all this, the institution looked about itself — and behold, its work was not done; and behold, society still groans...

The crowding of the capital grows day by day, dragging with it problems that call for new preventive means...

A bold idea passed through the association's mind: what if it were to put up a building [...] only a million liras?... A building housing a school for the teaching of trades and crafts, a residence to serve as a women's hotel, and a club offering adolescent girls every means of constructive recreation, and of arts and amusing handicrafts.

A meeting was held, at which it was decided to form a committee to collect the donations, comprising a choice group of the country's leading personalities, among them men of politics, of business, and of learning; and the city was divided among teams of the association's members, who would go out collecting donations...

And all set out for the capital and the mountain, spurred on by hope and devotion, this phrase going before them: "What you contribute today, you invest in the youth of tomorrow..."

I forgot to mention that the campaign is headed by Mrs. Eva Malik, and that it began after January 15, the date of the opening dinner...