Arab Media Award to focus on youngsters

Media organisations and individuals, including youngsters, may submit journalistic pieces to the annual Arab Media Award, which will honour environment journalists and stories about children and youth in the Arab nations.

Participants from Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will contributed ideas about the new Arab Media Award on Child Rights. The sponsors of the prize are calling on media organisations and individuals, including youngsters, to submit journalistic pieces about Arab youth.

The yearly award for media achievement will honour winners in four categories: television, radio, print and the web. Media initiatives shaped for and by adolescents are of particular interest to the pre-selection committees, which will be established at each Unicef country office in the Middle East and North Africa.

The award jury will be composed of experts from the sponsoring groups – Unicef, Al Bayan and the Dubai Press Club – as well as seasoned media professionals, "junior journalists" and others.

The first edition of the prize will only consider entries in Arabic, and the award ceremony will take place at Unicef's fourth Arab Media Forum in November. The honours will be widened to other languages in the following years.

Mahmoud Sabri, one of the youths who helped conceive the award, is a 17-year-old activist with several years' experience in a Palestinian youth association. He has suffered from degenerative blindness since birth.

Mahmoud has become increasingly aware of the importance of fostering connections among young people and their communities.

Late last year, he and a dozen other teenage leaders from across the Arab world gathered in Dubai for the third Arab Media Forum on adolescents and media representation.

The yearly event is supported by Unicef and co-sponsored by the Dubai Press Club and the Al Bayan newspaper.

Delegates to the forum discussed youth participation in media programmes and debated a range of topics, such as ethical reporting standards, conflict and instability, education, employment, religion and HIV/AIDS.

The deadline for entries is October 15.

Al Bayan is published by Awraq Publishing, which also publishes Emirates Business.