Four months after the inauguration of Dar Almadanya for Knowledge in Tataouine, the initiative which was a resounding success with the local population and especially young people, the Minister of Education, Mr. Néji Jalloul, inaugurated this Tuesday 28 February 2017 the second center of the book and research which will be called Dar Almadanya for the Knowledge in Sousse, and this in the presence of Mr Lotfi Maktouf President of Almadanya.

This center is located in Souk Lahad. It is strategically positioned and surrounded by a variety of schools and universities. These institutions include the Higher Institute of Applied Sciences of Technology, the Elkafif High School and the Assad Ibn Alfurat Primary School.

“The inauguration of Dar Almadanya in Sousse, after the one in Tataouine and which took place last October, is a testament to the relevance of cooperation between civil society and the State.” Said Minister of Education Neji Jalloul.

According to Mr Lotfi Maktouf, “Dar Almadanya is at the center of a strong concentration of students who only want access to places of exchange and tools for research and knowledge; Not only in their own fields of study but with a wider objective of general culture and openness to other fields”. It is precisely to this student population that the offer of Dar Almadanya is indeed intended.

Similar to Dar Almadanya Tataouine, the Dar Almadanya Sousse building was made available to the Almadanya Foundation under an agreement signed by the Ministry of Education and Almadanya. It is always by virtue of that Convention that the Foundation is committed to providing, equipping and managing the center of hundreds of books, computer rooms and cultural spaces with open and free access to all.

For Dar Almadanya of Sousse, Almadanya has equipped the center with over 25,000 titles in Arabic, French and English and various other languages ​​such as German and Spanish.
“I renew our gratitude and our thanks to the illustrious Payot bookstore and its dynamic President Pascal Vandenberghe, who has made our dreams a reality and thanks to whom, hundreds of thousands of books are given to equip our libraries and our various reading corners throughout Tunisia.” Mr Maktouf said.

Judging from the successful experience of Dar Almadanya Tataouine, this cultural space will attract a wide variety of audiences like young people who want to learn computer science or surf the internet, doctoral students and researchers in the scientific, technical or humanities fields.

The particularity of this center compared to the one in Tataouine is that it is open to the blind public. Indeed, the center is adjacent to the Elkafif High School, the primary school of the visually impaired. Almadanya seized the opportunity for Dar Almadanya to open its doors to these blind students. Thus, the center provides games for the visually impaired and a includes a panoply of audio books, in cooperation with the audio library of the French-speaking Switzerland.

With three different clubs (a theater club led by Professor Mohamed Doghmane, a film club animated by Mr Sendy Zardi and a calligraphy club led by Professor Fraj Brahim) and two games rooms, Dar Almadanya for The Knowledge of Sousse considers itself a true center of culture and leisure.
There is also a printing room in the center, where, in collaboration with the Elkafif High School and an association for the visually impaired, Braille books will be printed.

It should be remembered that Dar Almadanya in Tataouine was inaugurated by Mr Neji Jelloul in the presence of Mr Lotfi Maktouf President of Almadanya and Mr Pascal Vandenberghe the CEO of Payot editions in the 5th of October 2016.

The center has 18,000 titles in three different languages, two large computer rooms and a brain games room. Thus it was considered the largest school library in North Africa.

Since its inauguration, the Tataouine center was visited by 25,000 young people, an average of one class per day. Excursions are organized for high school students and schoolchildren in a radius of more than one hundred kilometers.

3500 schoolchildren were able to benefit from it every weekend. Some researchers attending Dar Almadanya Tataouine came from as far away as Sfax to consult books that they could not obtain in their universities.