Iraq kicks off ‘Innovative Youth Competition’

The Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research launched the country’s first annual “Innovative Youth Competition”, the ministry announced Sunday (January 20th).

The competition aims to motivate Iraqi university students, as well as young non-students, by developing their skills and potential and supporting their creative projects, ministry spokesman Qassim Mohammed told Mawtani.

Competition participants must meet several requirements, he said. The submitted project should be characterised by ingenuity and creativity; the project cannot have been previously submitted in a local or international competition; and competitors must be undergraduate students at a college or an institute, or, if they are not students, must be younger than 35 years old.

From now until the beginning of March, university media offices across Iraq will accept projects in six fields: medical, engineering, administration and economy, agricultural and veterinary, pure sciences and literary works, according to Mohammed.

Ministry officials will form a committee for each category, and each committee will include three professors who will study the submitted projects and choose the winners, whose names will be announced at a large festival scheduled for April, he said.

The ministry has allocated almost 50 million dinars ($43,000) in cash prizes for three winners in each category, he said, with five million dinars ($4,300) going to the first place winner, two million to the second ($1,720) and one million ($860) to the third.

“On top of these prizes, the ministry will sponsor and market the winning inventions, as well as support inventors by giving them priority [when they apply for] scholastic grants and scholarships,” Mohammed said.

Cultivating creativity

According to Ihsan al-Quraishi, president of al-Qadissiya University, the ministry organises competitions every year for researchers, professors, and teaching and administrative staff.

Through the new competition, the ministry aims to reinforce and boost the invention process by including students and young people, encouraging them to conduct research and come up with ingenious “ideas that will ultimately serve the country”, he said.

It is important that state institutions and offices take advantage of these research projects and innovative studies, particularly in fields like industry and agriculture, as they help strengthen national development, and give inventors confidence and further incentive to continue contributing, al-Quraishi said.

Al-Qadissiya University has adopted the slogan, “The University in the service of the province”, and presented about 60 creative research projects that aim to develop al-Qadissiya province, he said, adding that the university shoulders responsibility as an active party in the province’s growth and development.

We must “increase the cash rewards offered to winners, as well as offer all kinds of support and the necessary facilities” so imagined projects can become reality, he said.

Meanwhile, Riyadh al-Zaidi, a member of the parliamentary committee on higher education, also welcomed the ministry’s sponsorship of the competition.

“It is one of the important steps our committee had been calling on the ministry to take: investing young Iraqi creativity in the path of building, reconstruction and progress,” he told Mawtani.

“Today, we badly need the creative talent of youth because it is an engine and catalyst for any civilised development,” he said. “This requires that we continue to work to support and encourage young talents and creative minds, giving them the opportunity to participate in the country’s future.”

Source: Al Shorfa