1950 Dec Lila Karageoziant reporting about her visit to the Middle East An Appreciation

1950 Dec 15 AGBU Board members Miss Lila Karageozian reporting about her visit to the Middle East An Appreciation! (Editor's note: The facts and personal impressions of Armenian life in Syria and Lebanon, by Miss Leila Karageozian, after two months of travel and close observation, are heartbreaking. They will profoundly move all Armenians to sacrifices and generous donations. We are grateful to Miss Karagheusian for bringing these facts and conditions to the attention of Armenians in America, who will surely respond to the appeal of the great president of Armenian General Benevolent Union, addressed in this issue to All Armenians) "some lines from the report… "I have tried to give you a quick survey of the vital work I saw being done by the AGBU in the Middle East. What I saw was a credit to the Union. I have come away enthusiastic but anxious, to tell you all about the great needs of our people over there, and how the Benevolent Union is helping to meet some of those needs, and what we all can do to help our Union to expand and increase its great humanitarian service." "My ""sight-seeing" last summer took me on a tour of 12 community schools in Aleppo and more than 20 in Beirut. Most of these schools are helped by the AGBU! there are 15,000 school children in Syria, of which 7,326 were subsidized by the AGBU in 1949-50 and 10,000 in Lebanon, of which 8,000 got some form of help. Most of these Community schools are terribly poor, not through any fault of their own; they are physically in dreadful shape. We in America would ever think of sending our children to such ramshackle schools!" "This is what I saw with my own eyes, and I was shocked and said to myself, "This is a disgrace and therefore a challenge to take to the Armenians of America!" "…schools that were shacks. Schools were sometimes housed in churches, school barns (you couldn't call them "buildings") with holes in the walls, holes in the tin roofs so large that they could see the sky. In winter, the rain pours through these holes on the children heads. Thousands of windows are without glass. The schools are terribly overcrowded; thousands of children have no desks at all!"