Lebanon - YWCA - Festival Returns After 25 Years
Nishee
Revived floral show has a new environmental message, writes Amal Bouhabib
It’s been a long winter for the Young Women’s Christian Association’s
Flower Festival. After flourishing for 16 years before the civil war when
florists flew in from England to lend a hand and embassies offered their own
floral arrangements the Festival went into a 25-year hibernation.
But this weekend, spring is in bloom once again with the revival of the
Festival scheduled for Friday at the Sioufi garden in Achrafieh.
In its heyday, the festival was held at venues like the Phoenicia, St. Georges,
the old Cafe d’Orient, and the Ministry of Tourism. A fitting setting this
year, the 20,000-square-meter Sioufi garden was offered by the Municipality of
Beirut when it asked the YWCA to revive the event.
“This year will be a little different,” said Andree Nader, former president
of YWCA in Achrafieh and festival organizer.
“We consider it a project for the environment as well as a flower show. We
want to encourage taking care of the environment and the establishment of
public gardens, which are still lacking in Lebanon. And in turn, we hope it’s
a step to promoting tourism. Only when Lebanon becomes beautiful again will
tourists come.”
The show promises to be a pleasant stroll through more 50 stands displaying the
efforts of as many participants. But more than a pretty picture, the YWCA wants
the festival to be an educational experience.
“The show is also to teach and explain how one should flower one’s balcony
or make a garden and how to present flowers,” said Nader.
“The war destroyed so much of the environment. We want to encourage people to
replant and to take care of what they have,” said Aida Abdel-Samad, Ain
Mreisse YWCA president.
It wasn’t easy to get the show back on its feet. With the country still in
recession, and the flower show so long out of commission, the YWCA had a
difficult time gathering sponsors for the event. After some searching, Banque
de la Mediterranee, Allied Business Bank and Banque Audi volunteered their
sponsorship. With support from the Municipality and the Department of Public
Gardens as well as donations from the Ministry of Tourism, the show began to
take root.
“It’s a beginning,” said an optimistic Leila Shaheen da Crouz, who
remembers the first festival in 1961. Da Crouz, a consultant for the show, has
held several positions at the YWCA, including national president and a position
on the YWCA world committee.
“It was a very elegant, widely attended event in the past. It attracted a lot
of participants from embassies to airlines and professional florists,” she
said.
In the past, the festival used to double as a competition, da Crouz explained.
This year the organizers decided to restrict it to a public exhibition.
“We’re not seeking any income out of the event. In fact, we’re just
hoping to break even. But we’ve received a lot of support that I hope will
help the show take the form and extent that it had in the past.”
The exhibition, taking up some 2,000 square meters of the garden, will feature
floral displays by 34 volunteer women, and stands by 12 embassies representing
the floral “specialty of their countries.” Displays by landscape artists
and commercial participants such as Exotica, Captain Rose, Green Garden, and
Style and Nature will also be set up on elaborate balconies and terraces.
The volunteer women have each been given a theme, selected by a YWCA committee,
around which to create their arrangements, a tradition carried over from
previous shows.
Many of the women have studied with Archo Tutunjian, a former instructor in
ikebana (Japanese floral art) who is also a co-organizer of the event.
“Without her expertise, I would have been lost,” laughed Nader, who
admitted that although she was thrilled to be asked to organize the festival,
she knows little about flowers.
To encourage children to participate, the organizers have invited students from
neighboring schools to attend the three-day festival. Face painting and lessons
given by Exotica staff on “how to plant” will be offered to the children as
entertaining educational side events.
“It’s not just for grown-ups,” Nader insisted. “The intent is to raise
future generations with a better consciousness; to teach them to love nature.
If there aren’t trees, if there aren’t flowers, we all suffer.”
Under the patronage of Andree Lahoud, wife of President Emile Lahoud, the
festival opens on Friday at 6pm. It will continue on Saturday and Sunday from
10.30am to 9pm.
The event also coincides with the 100-year anniversary of the YWCA in Lebanon,
preparations for which are five years into the making, under the guidance of da
Crouz.
The flower show, an event sponsored by the Beirut branches of the YWCA is one
of its first celebratory events.
“The point of the show is to whip up interest, to get people of all ages
working together for a good cause. It’s what the YWCA has always been
about,” she explained.
The show, complete with sandwich bars, coffee stands, and benches for those who
take a more leisurely approach to admiring the scenery, is well prepared to
welcome guests. And the organizers hope the festival will reclaim its spot as
an annual event.
“We believe in continuity at the ‘Y’,” da Crouz pointed out. “This is
a step to rebuilding our culture.”