This is also the second year HE the Minister has given his backing to the project and was thanked for his support at the launch event by Vodafone Qatar chairman Sheikh Dr Khalid bin Thani al-Thani.

Also in attendance were HE the Minister of Youth and Sports Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali and Vodafone Qatar CEO Kyle Whitehill.

The launch event was marked by the gifting of paintings by artist Ali Hassan al-Jaber to HE Dr al-Kuwari and HE al-Ali.

In line with the theme of this year’s Qatar National Day celebrations, the verse “I  treated you with honesty, guidance and integrity”, which comes from a poem written by Qatar’s founder Sheikh Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani, has been chosen as the title for this year’s Vodafone’s literary competition.

HE Dr al-Kuwari lauded the initiative.

“We commend Vodafone for the role they are playing in encouraging reading and writing in Arabic and so I and the ministry have given them our full support and backing. It is vital that companies in Qatar promote such initiatives in support of our leadership and country’s vision,” al-Kuwari said.

Vodafone Qatar’s director of External Affairs Mohamed al-Yami added: “We’re very proud to bring this literary competition for the second year in a row, which has been designed to encourage the preservation of one of the most important threads of our Arabic culture and tradition.”

The competition’s launch was followed by a seminar that looked at the art and history of story-writing in Qatar. Qatari literary figures Dr Ahmed Abdelmalik, Jamal Fayez, Dr Huda al-Nuaimi, Mohsen al-Hajiri and Hessa al-Awadi led the discussion.

The competition is open to all citizens and residents from now until February 13, and submissions for both the competition’s categories have to be in the Arabic language.

Following are the categories - Category 1: taking inspiration from the competition’s title “I treated you with honesty, guidance and integrity”, submissions have to be in the form of one short story between 500 and 1,000 words. Prizes for this category are QR20,000 (first), QR15,000 (second) and QR10,000 (third); and Category 2: submissions have to be a collection of stories, on any subject matter, that’s no less than 10 pages and doesn’t exceed 100 pages. Prizes for this category are QR50,000 (first), QR30,000 (second) and QR20,000 (third).

The panel of judges, including Qatari literary experts and luminaries, will convene in February to agree the winners of the QR145,000 prize pot and the winners will be announced in March.

For further details, visit www.vodafone.qa