The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, represented by the Directorate General of Youth, revealed the Youth Excellence Award for the year 2021 in its second edition, which is an annual award granted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth in honor of the skilled Omani youth on the Omani Youth Day every year. This award aims to encourage Omani youth to be creative and innovative in various fields, to embrace all creativity and innovation, and invest the energies of the largest number of talented and creative youth in various fields.
Wadha Al-Farsiah, a member of the award team in the General Directorate of Youth, said: “The announcement of the results of the winners in the Youth Excellence Award coincides every year with the celebration of the Omani Youth Day on October 26, as the award consolidates the idea of celebrating Omani youth in a systematic manner and with declared and clear criteria, to emphasize youth work. It honors and appreciates the efforts of young people, and believes in the potential of young people through the projects they present, as well as inspires the spirit of honorable competition annually among Omani youth to present projects in various fields of interest to society.”
Wadha also added: “The award is considered to be a link between youth and stakeholders, as in the first edition, where some stakeholders continued to adopt a number of winning youth projects, which contributes to supporting young entrepreneurs and enabling them to move their projects and develop them to another stage. In the long term, we expect the award to contribute to the development, renewal and improvement of youth work, based on the spirit of honest competition that the award instills in young people.”
Youth priorities
The award comes in the ministry’s keenness to encourage positive competition between Omani youth، youth initiatives، and youth institutions. In order to monitor and honor creative youth by participating in the Omani Youth Day, which falls on October 26, and that are in line with the axes of Oman 2040 vision, such as the economy and competitive structure. Through the field of entrepreneurship, the axis of a creative human society through all areas that motivate young people to innovate, and the axis of the environment whose elements are sustainable through the field of environment. The award is in line with the priority of youth as one of the priorities and most important pillars of Oman Vision 2040.
Prize Objectives
The award seeks to achieve several objectives, the most important of which is highlighting the contributions of Omani youth to achieving the future vision of the Sultanate, honoring them, promoting the values of belonging and active citizenship, and creating a spirit of competition among Omani youth. The award was divided into 4 categories this year by creating a category related to private sector companies that support youth work, and the first category is dedicated to youth initiatives, defined as youth work groups based on youth, providing activities and services for youth and possessing a legal presence through sports clubs, civil teams, and development committees social, and civil society associations. As for the second category, it is dedicated to youth institutions, which are institutions owned and operated by young people, providing services to the youth category, and having a commercial registry. The third category, which is new to this version of the competition, is the category of private sector companies that support the youth sector (not including government companies) that allocate part of their work in the field of social investment, provide supportive services to young people, and finance their activities, whether this support is provided to youth initiatives or institutions youthfulness. As for the fourth category, it represents the project, which is the work submitted by individual, youth initiative, youth organization, and private sector institution as one of the Foundation’s projects to participate in the award. This project is characterized by its terms of description, planning, implementation, follow-up, evaluation, impact and sustainability.
The 9 classification of the Awards
The nine areas of the award are distributed in entrepreneurship, education, media, culture, science, sports, heritage, environment and work. The participants will compete in two areas, namely culture and science, where the participants will compete in two areas, namely culture and science. At the level of youth initiatives, competition will be on the nine areas of the award. At the level of youth institutions, competition will be in 4 areas: entrepreneurship, education, culture and work, where the competition will be at the level of private sector institutions. The course will cover 5 areas: entrepreneurship, education, science, environment and work.
Judging criteria
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth also set criteria for judging the award, which were summed up in 8 criteria: its connection to the youth sector, the project’s objectives and applicability, the project’s launch from the study of the youth’s realism and their needs, project planning and implementation (mechanisms and procedures used in implementing work), creativity and innovation, and financial resources management, monitoring and evaluation, value-added tax and future plan.
Stages of judging
The committee has identified 4 stages for evaluating the entries, where the first stage will be the initial screening based on the general conditions announced for participation, and the second stage will be to evaluate the projects submitted for the award through a neutral jury (from outside the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth), while the third stage will be Interviews and field visits to the projects, according to the capabilities of judging (in the second stage), and finally the announcement of the results of the Youth Excellence Award on the Omani Youth Day, October 26.
