Environmental Drawing Competition 2018

General objectives: • To help children develop a sense of respect and care for the natural environment. • To enable students to express their thoughts and ideas of the environment they live in. • To raise awareness in schools about the importance of the natural environment and ways of preserving it. • To demonstrate students’ knowledge about the electricity wastage and natural greenery of the UAE • To help students realize that each individual has a social responsibility to contribute to the protection and preservation of the environment Specific objectives • To motivate the students to envision sustainable classrooms; ‘My Sustainable Classroom’. • To raise awareness and focus on the Ocean Pollution; ‘Ocean Pollution: Leave No Plastic’. • To instill a sense of obligation and responsibility towards the country and the founding father; ‘Year of Zayed’. The year 2018 witnessed the highest ever participation rate from schools, since the inception of the programme. A total of 1,215 entries were received from 384 schools. This included 45 student members of EEG. The three powerful themes for 2018 were: “My Sustainable Classroom” (6-8 years), “Ocean Pollution: Leave No Plastic” (9-11 years) and “The Year of Zayed” (12-16 years). The Environmental Drawing Competition is growing phenomenally every year. In 2018, we received the highest number of participating schools and students since the inception of the programme in 2004. In 2018, we were successful in reaching out to over 65,000 students by raising awareness, providing them with a suitable platform, and awarding them for making the effort to be involved in environmental issues that really matter. EEG has been successful in using this Competition to spread the message of environmental responsibility and recognising the champions whose commendable efforts will help shape the future of the planet. To provide an insight on the growth and impact of the Competition, we have compiled the following participation numbers: • 2004: 300 students • 2010: 695 students • 2015: 744 students • 2017: 1094 students • 2018: 1215 Also, in terms of participating schools: • 2004: 52 schools • 2010: 140 schools • 2015: 196 schools • 2017: 262 schools • 2018: 384 schools EEG has several plans in the pipeline to increase impact of this initiative. We would like to open this Competition to other countries in the Middle East too. However, as we do not receive any monetary sponsorship currently, this is not feasible. For stakeholders looking to get involved, we would encourage the entity to be a partner/sponsor of this programme. We look forward to partner with like-minded NGOs to enable us to roll it out in neighbouring Arab countries. We also hope to rope in the financial support of responsible companies within the private sector. The inclusion of professional famous artists would be a welcome step as they can be involved in judging the artworks of these aspiring young artists and also give some valuable tips to them.