Connecticut western news., 1919-02-27
Y. ". C. A. OPENS
 WORK IN ITALY
Tea and Club Rooms Opened for American Women.
Miss Charlotte NIven, Director of ItaI- Ian Work, Prepares for Influx of
 American Woman Students.

Italy is now included in the war work of the American Y. W. c. A. 4
 Miss Mabel Warner of Salina, Kan, and Chicago left Paris few days ago for Rome, where she will be in charge of Hostess House for American girls employed there. by the American Red Cross, the Embassy and the new Tu- berculosis Commission. Miss Warner has been director of the Y. w. c. A. Hostess House at Brest, France.
 Miss Warner will open a tea room and club rooms where the American women can gather for social times. Rome Is harborIng a refuge population of about 10000 and accommodations are difficult to find
 The work in Rome was started ns a direct result of the appeal of Miss Charlotte Niven, one of the National Y. w. c. A. secretaries in Italy, who Is spending a few months in France as advisor in the French work. ...
 Miss Nivens dreams of Y. W. c. A. work in Italy include the maintenance of residence for non-Italian women, who, she feels, will come to Italy In great numbers after the war to study music and art.
 'T believe at this time such project is particularly important because wo- men from other countries should be encouraged to come to Italy to replace the great numbers of German women who flooded Italy in the past, many of them paid agents of their govern ment," Miss Nlven said in discussing her plans.
 Miss Niven has asked the American Y. W. c. A. to aid the Italian Associa- tion in establishing a center, perhaps at Genoa, with two American secre- taries, with physical and recreational training, to act as a training school for Italian women. In connection with If her plan would include Hostess House for girls passing through the city or employed there. Such a center would become eventually the center for all Y. W. c. A. work in Italy, both Italian and foreign.
 Tn her formal appeal for help for the Unione Christiana Delle Giovani (the Italian name for Young Women's Christian Association Miss, Niven has emphasized two facts, the poverty of the Italian Association on the one hand and the need and opportunity on the other for an American program in Italy at the present time.
 Miss Niven's favorite way of Illus trating the friendliness of the Italian woman to America is by telling the story of the Italian mother who sald she had taken down the picture of the Madonna which had hung for many years over her bed and was putting In Its place one of President Wilson.
 "In our work in the Unione we have lacked trained leadership as well as the material resources to give such training. We have had no means to buy modern equipments Consequently we have not the visible results of American and British work
 Feeble as our work may be, 1t is not useless Many girls in all parts of Italy have told us how much the Unione meant ,sNsxuSNTes Italian girls are touch'xSly grateful for the smallest efforts. They respond eager ly to friendliness.
 "There is no other agency doing in Italy what the Association Is trying to do."
 Miss Niven hes spent the past seven years In work with the Italian wo- men, starting as director of hostel, or boarding home, for Italian women stu dents at Florence. She is an Ameri- can from New York, where she was one time head of the Christadora Set tlement House.