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Unique creative writing competition for young writers

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Youths keeping the environment clean.

KUCHING: The Kuching Beach Cleaners and Sarawak Eco-Warriors is organising the Green Microfiction Challenge creative writing competition this month.

With a grant from the United Nations Development Programme, the competition will run from Aug 9 to 21, aimed to encourage young writers to think critically about key environmental themes.

Aspiring writers, first-time writers, students and youths aged 13 to 24 and residing in Malaysia are invited to take part.

Three age categories are open for participation – 13 to 15 years, 16 to 19, and 20 to 24.

Participants are required to submit a 500-word story within 24 hours of the prompt release. These single-word prompts will be released at 9am on challenge days Aug 9, 11, 13, 16, and 18.

This challenge is also held in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus, and the Swinburne Sarawak Green Club.

“We heartily embrace this initiative to encourage young people to think about pressing wildlife and environmental conservation issues and to express themselves creatively in writing.

Youths taking part in beach cleaning activities.

“Today, our world is facing unprecedented challenges and it is important for the youth to think critically about these issues.

“Linked to every aspect of our lives, conservation is an issue that is crucial for us to understand,” said Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus chief executive officer and pro vice-chancellor Professor Lau Hieng Ho.

“We welcome young people to write about conservation issues creatively in short stories that we hope will engage others in every generation.”

In December 2020, the Kuching Beach Cleaners and Sarawak Eco-Warriors received a grant of USD20,000 (RM81,800) from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme under under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to empower and integrate youths into environmental conservation.

The programme consists of three components, the first of which is to provide opportunities for youths to directly engage in environmental conservation through activities like clean-up programmes or participate in community gardens.

The second is to increase knowledge and capacity through training and virtual programmes such as the Greenbinar series which are public webinars held every month and the Young Green Leaders (YGL) programme, which is a four-month training programme that focuses on providing youths with capacity building opportunities and to develop their network to meeting and learning from people in the environmental conservation world.

The third component of the programme is to compile and highlight the efforts and values of youths towards the environment with programmes such as the Green Microfiction Challenge.

More details can be found at https://www.kuchingyounggreen.com/microfiction/

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