The Award will reward winners from the three age categories: youth (US$ 2000); teens (US$ 1500) and children (US$ 1000), said the ICESCO on its website, adding 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), according to the same source, noting that 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 candidate must be a student from a non-Arab country, whose first language is not Arabic, said the ISESCO, adding that the work must be submitted through the student’s educational institution. The educational institution must only send one outstanding work for each category and Nnominations received from Member States must be submitted through the National Commissions and competent parties, as well as the video must not exceed 3 minutes in length for children, 4 minutes for teens, and 5 minutes for young people.

Nominations must be sent prior to 31 May 2020 to the following e-mail: [email protected].