AVC Multimedia e-Book Series e-Book#3: AGBU 100 Years of History (Vol. I) | Page 42

CLOTHING THE SURVIVORS: THE AGBU'S CLOTHING WORKSHOP IN CAIRO

The decision to create a clothing workshop for the refugees in rags was taken by the AGBU’s Central Committee in November 1917. A Ladies’ Central Committee was formed immediately thereafter. The main workshop was inaugurated on 12 December 1917 in Cairo. Branches of the Ladies’ Committee were then opened in Alexandria and Manchester in order to help the Cairo workshop carry out its task. The Alexandria branch, with its own workshop, was founded in February 1918. Large donations came from the Manchester, Southampton, and London branches, as well as those in Geneva, Nicosia, The Hague, Paris, Diredava, the Sudan, Djibouti, Milan, Marseille, Salonika, Melbourne, Chelsea, Addis Ababa, and Basra. The clothes workshop consisted of a workroom where several employees and unpaid volunteers made clothes in large quantities, together with a depot that was the point of departure for missions to selected areas.

Thanks to the work of the Ladies’ Committees, all the schoolchildren in the Port Said camp were provided with uniforms. In 1917-1918, large amounts of clothing were sent to Palestine and Syria. One statistic indicates that, from the day the clothes workshop was opened down to late November 1918, it supplied the refugees of Port Said, Palestine, and Syria with no fewer than 32,281 articles of new clothing. A year later, the figure had risen to 58,089. Even Armenian prisoners-of-war who had fought in the Ottoman army received civilian outfits thanks to this enterprise.

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Humanitarian Assistance to Genocide Survivors in Palestine, 1917-1918

The Ladies' Central Committee, responsible for the AGBU's clothing workshop in Cairo. From left to right, seated: Makruhi Nedurian, vice-president, Anna Negib Budros-Ghali, president, and their colleagues (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).