The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) announced the launch of its new “Bayan” Award for Creative Expression in Arabic, as part of “ICESCO Digital Home” and in line with its education initiative, “Learn and Master Arabic at Home”.

The Award will reward winners from the three age categories: youth (US$ 2000); teens (US$ 1500) and children (US$ 1000).

For its part, ICESCO stated that the Award aims to promote students’ creative productivity in Arabic during lockdown; highlight the universality of Arabic; support the continuity of the learning process; ensure complementarities between the educational and cultural dimensions; and catalyse self-development of linguistic skills through creative writing and verbal expression.

The Award covers creative expression where the student records his pronunciation and diction on a video based on a text he/she wrote in standard Arabic specifically for this contest (verse/prose, article, short story). The nominated works should work under the following themes: distance learning; family in the time of lockdown; hygiene and health; necessity is the mother of innovation; solidarity during the state of emergency; the world post-covid-19; investing time during lockdown; and communication in the time of social distancing.

To be nominated for the Award, the following criteria should be met:

-The candidate must be a student from a non-Arab country, whose first language is not Arabic;

-The work must be submitted through the student’s educational institution;

-The educational institution must only send one outstanding work for each category;

-Nominations received from Member States must be submitted through the National Commissions and competent parties;

-The video must not exceed 3 minutes in length for children, 4 minutes for teens, and 5 minutes for young people;

-The video must not have been published or submitted to another competition before;

-The nomination file must include the video, the text written by the student and the nomination form duly filled in. The form is available at:

http://www.icesco.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Nomination-Form-ICESCO-Bayan-Award.pdf

Nominations must be sent prior to 31 May 2020 to the following e-mail: bayanaward@icesco.org

ICESCO also pointed out that a jury will be tasked with examining nomination files and selecting winners who will be announced on ICESCO’s website via official letters to the competent parties. In addition to the monetary reward, the winners will be given certificates at a ceremony to be held after the end of lockdown.

It is worth mentioning that ICESCO has launched, through its Center of Arabic for non-Arabic Speakers, the initiative “Learn Arabic, Master it at Home”, in cooperation with “Granada Editions” and the “Saudi Electronic University” to allow free access to educational digital contents by non-Arabic speaking students from all over the world.