The Armenian Youth Association
AYA ACTIVITIES: THE FIRST YEARS
Initially, the activities of the AYA were quite similar to those of the Near East League. The association continued to organize evening courses for young Ar¬menians who had dropped out of school. Its leaders offered them vocational training in centers in Beirut, Aleppo, Damascus, and Alexandretta (aimed at future tailors and seamstresses, in particular), as well as courses in arithmetic and instruction in both Armenian and foreign languages (French and Arabic). The courses were usually taught by young instructors or AGBU scholarship students, all of whom were also AYA members.7
The association’s Beirut chapter was by far the most dynamic. In summer 1934, it had eighty-five members and occupied a building located on the left bank of the Nahr Beirut, in the eastern part of the city, near the tramway line that ran be¬tween the refugee camps and the Armenians’ new urban neighborhoods.8 Some¬time toward the end of the 1930s, the club was baptized the Antranig Club. It became the focus of very lively athletic and cultural activities. It organized literary evenings, concerts, and lectures on various subjects, and also fielded soccer teams: the best, the “Antranig,” held its own with the other leading teams in the first division of the Lebanese soccer league. The association also had its back-up teams, ... Read all