Kerala educational group to coordinate Arab Reading Challenge

Kerala headquartered Ma'din Academy in Malappuram has been named the headquarter for taking forward the Arab Reading Challenge (ARC) festival to India.

Sayyid Ibrahim Khaleel Al Bukari, chairman of Ma'din Academy, told reporters here on Wednesday that this festival has now been extended to India and the main objective of this is to encourage sustainable and regular reading habits among students.

ARC is a project launched by H.H. Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, that aims at facilitating a million students to read 50 million books.

"The ARC will provide $3 million cash prizes and incentives to the students, families and supervisors who participate in the reading challenge and the best performing schools and supervisors will be honoured," Al Bukari said.

Ma'din Public School, run by Ma'din Academy, has been named the headquarter to coordinate the reading festival here with the support of the School of Research Science (SRS) in Dubai, which serves as the headquarters of the ARC.

The initiative, in coordination with all schools, will prepare for the 50 million books challenge through five stages.

"Each stage will comprise reading and summarising 10 children's books, and afterwards, competitions will be held at the schools, district, state and at the country level. The finals will be held in Dubai in late May, 2016," added Al-Bukari.

The student who comes first will get $150,000 of which $100,000 will go towards the student's tuition and $50,000 to the student's family.

The awards for outstanding supervisors are valued at $300,000, and incentives for schools, as well as awards for students would be worth $1 million.

Those who wish to be part of the reading challenge should directly register in the official website www. arabreadingchallenge.com and collect the reading passport from Ma'din Public School following the directions from the Dubai central administrative office of ARC.

Ma'din Academy over the years has already set up 5,000 home libraries to enhance the reading abilities of families.