Brussels, 02/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - Fourteen children from the four corners of the Earth (Africa, Asia, Caribbean and Pacific, Latin America, Mediterranean and Middle East, and countries neighbouring on the EU to the east) have won the international drawing competition on gender equality, launched by the Commission on International Women's Day, on 8 March 2010. They will each receive a prize of €1,000, which will be used to buy books, computers, pay for school or library fees or other education materials, the Commission announces in a press release. The winner drawings will be exhibited at the museum of childhood in Brussels between 9 and 26 November 2010. The exhibition will be inaugurated on 9 November by the commissioner for development, Andris Piebalgs. A number of the winners will attend.
In addition to their originality, their creativity and their artistic quality, the winning drawings have been selected on their ability to express a strong message relevant to the context of their country. Many children taking part in the competition have backgrounds presenting extreme social and human conditions, such as in Afghanistan, and very often express through their drawings the harsh reality of their everyday lives by depicting war scenes and the anguish and pain that they cause, the Commission comments.
Since the competition was opened on 8 March, the Commission has received 26,080 drawings from nearly 50,000 children in over 1,600 Community schools and centres. In total, 61 delegations of the EU, established in six regions of the world, have taken part. Over 600 drawings were pre-selected and sent to Brussels for the final part of the competition. The 14 prizewinners were chosen by a panel composed of 50 children from the Brussels I European School. For further information: http: //ec.europa.eu/europaid (G.B./transl.jl)