*Creation of supervised homes for adolescent girls in Egypt and Lebanon. In 1923, Major Davidson, who had earlier directed NER’s operations in Thrace and Macedonia, was named head of its Egyptian branch. He first organized, late in 1923, the transfer of some forty Armenian orphan girls to Egypt, placing them with Armenian families. In 1924, he opened a residence for both sexes in Cairo, putting it under the supervision of a couple, the Khanigians. Here the orphans, the great majority of whom were over sixteen, learned manual trades that were supposed to ensure that they could earn a livelihood after leaving
the institution. A supervised residence of the same kind was founded in Alexandria. In 1930, the two NER institutions in Cairo and Alexandria accommodated, between them, around one thousand two hundred teenaged orphans.67
In 1924, NER agreed to put these residences and the adolescent girls who lived in them under the responsibility of the Armenian prelacy of Egypt. In May 1928, the prelacy, in its turn, placed the six hundred adolescent girls who had left these homes after coming of age (three hundred twenty-eight of them in Cairo and two hundred seventy-seven in Alexandria) under the protection of the AGBU’s Egyptian committee. It found variegated situations for the young women from Cairo. Fifty-two were placed as maids with Armenian, and sixty-four with non-Armenian families; they worked on contracts that their host families had signed with the AGBU. One hundred twenty-three were adopted by Armenians, and another thirty-one by non-Armenians. Finally, twenty-two young women were admitted to supervised AGBU residences,68 of which the Union built two: one in Cairo’s Shubra neighborhood (in May 1928) and the other in the Ramleh section of Alexandria (in September 1929). Both were called “Melkonian Homes.” The Cairo residence was ... Read all
Integrating Adult Orphans into Society
The AGBU shelter for adolescent girls in Cairo
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
Azniv Kezirian, the first orphaned girl from Dörtyol's Sisvan orphanage to marry a fellow orphan, Hovsep Uluzian, 13 July 1921 (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).