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Reading and Cultural Animation Center

Since 1985, the Francophonic Agency has worked on elaborating a program to create centers for reading and cultural animation in order to serve the public.

In 2001, Amioun had a similar center founded in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture. Nowadays, it is managed by the Municipality of Amioun.Two main elements lie behind the activities of this center: An active employee entrusted by the Municipality and a group of volunteered women from the town.

The Municipality of Amioun has worked on providing a location able to receive 150 persons to meet around various activities such as reading, lectures, conferences, documentation and different cultural competitions covering a wide range of humanitarian, historic, geographic and educational subjects beside references and others. Moreover, the Municipality has supplied the center with water, electricity, heating, Internet, telephonic line, tables, chairs, shells and computer…

The Municipality also pays the rent and the fees of water, electricity and the phone.

The Ministry of Education has offered a television and VCR set, a radio and a computer… beside around 3000 books in both French and Arabic languages. It also supplies this public library with University references.

The Francophonic Agency has worked in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture on training employees and volunteers to work in various centers in order to prepare them to manage and organize these centers following the same method.

In Amioun, activities take place according to a weekly program: six days per week, six hours and a half per day. The center is visited by people from the town as well as the neighborhood in order to read, borrow books and undertake research in various subjects.

The Ministry of Culture has undertaken a wide range of activities in the center of reading and cultural animation. Herein we list some of them:

- A piece of theater, a poem or a novel presented by students from neighboring schools in the region during the week of reading in April 2002. The Ministry also distributed rewards for the winners.

- A musical concert held in the occasion of the International Music Day in July 2002, where groups from Francophonic states (Senegal, Bulgary and Vietnam) beside local groups played on traditional musical instruments.

- Showing movies on a huge screen for young people and children in August 2002.

- A piece of theater for the French Author, Molière, presented by a troup from Niger in the French Language in September 2002.

- A circus animated by “arc-en-ciel” group and attended by the students who participated in some of its parts.

- A spectacular show animated by a Canadian group of Red Indians “Sandokwa” coming from Ontario, where more than 450 persons attended it in October 2002.

- An exposition about water, “Fresh Water”: Pannels, posters and films discussing various problems such as pollution and water preservation… during the week of Science in February 2003.

Beside these activities, the center had his own local cultural and educational a leisure activities.

Herein, we list some of them:

- Showing various films for different age groups.

- Undertaking a drawing competition covering Mother’s Day, Child’s Day and Spring Where students from various schools participated and received awards.

- Cultural competitions on consecutive stages (Scrabble-Monopoly) among the town’s children.

- Competition in Geography, where the subject covered was Lebanon.

- A poetic evening in which participated Dr. May Saadé, Dr. Christo Najem and Mr. Chawki Sassine.

- Christmas carols presented by a group of university students from Koura where various age groups were present in this special time of the year.

- Two summer camps sponsored by the Municipality of Amioun took place during the summer of 2003, one covering the subject of pollution, the other the subject of citizenship.