A UAE newspaper has said that the 10.5 million participants in this year's Arab Reading Challenge, ARC, is a great validation of the UAE’s supercharged vision to make books an integral part of Arab youths’ lives.
ABU DHABI, (Pakistan Point News - 01st Nov, 2018) A UAE newspaper has said that the 10.5 million participants in this year's Arab Reading Challenge, ARC, is a great validation of the UAE’s supercharged vision to make books an integral part of Arab youths’ lives.
"The ARC, the largest ever Arab literacy initiative, launched in 2015 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, is continuing to be a resounding success," said Gulf news in an editorial on Thursday.
The paper added, "The award won this year by a nine-year-old Moroccan girl for her exceptional assimilation of knowledge demonstrates the undeniable transformation that can be achieved by initiatives that are guided by the right vision.
"The ARC’s core mission to raise awareness on the importance of reading among students and youth in the Arab world is premised on the region’s dismal reading habit numbers and the initiative is working at the grass roots to lead to a resurgence in self-learning, analytical thinking and enriching one’s emotional and intellectual intelligence."
"The ARC is addressing this reading crisis by encouraging young readers to devour as many books as possible (more than 50) in one academic year and vie for the coveted award, with a combined prize money of around AED11 million. ARC’s incentivisation, thus is, in its root form, the oldest and the most critical tool gifted to young minds that will help them forge ahead. This was the tool used by ambitious societies through the centuries to become intellectual path-breakers and thought leaders and this tool will continue to maintain its preeminence in the centuries to come," it explained.
"This week also sees another stream of intellectual vigour, the Sharjah International Book Fair, SIBF, further irrigate the UAE’s role in spreading the culture of reading. The SIBF, the largest of its kind in the region, is now in its 37th edition and its growing footprint endorses its success in promoting reading habit with a stunning array of international publishers, authors and intellectuals who gather in the emirate year after year to lend their combined might to celebrate the role and power of the written word in human evolution."
In conclusion, the paper said, "In an era that is beset with digital self-determinism by the young and its advertent fallout - shrinking attention spans, socio-cultural isolation and diminished pursuit of intellectual challenges, grave fault lines that are developing faster than one can map them - endeavours by the UAE such as the ARC and SIBF are lifelines for the classical survival and intellectual revival of the written word and the love for reading."
