Deadline: 15-Oct-23
ESCWA is launching the third cycle of the ESCWA Digital Arabic Content Award for Sustainable Development, in collaboration with the World Summit Awards (WSA).
The aim of this Award is to recognize the best digital Arabic content products in the Arab region that focus on sustainable development. It also aims at highlighting the benefits of digital technologies and its platforms for advancing sustainable development and accelerating progress on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Through this Award, ESCWA seeks to contribute to bridging the digital content gaps and supporting the development of the information and knowledge society in the Arab region.
General Contest Rules
- The ESCWA DAC Award focuses on digital Arabic content applications with a strong impact on the 2030 development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- All submitters to the ESCWA DAC Award have to abide by the rules and regulations mentioned in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. Submissions therefore which encourage war, the exercise of violence, fraud, racism or discrimination will be eliminated. Similarly, submissions that violate international copyright provisions will be excluded.
- ESCWA cannot be held liable for accepted submissions and their contents and rights.
Award Information
- Each of the winners in both categories will receive a Trophy and Travel and Accommodation in the city where the 2024 Arab Forum for Sustainable Development takes place.
- Additionally, winners in the Young Entrepreneurs category will be sponsored to attend the 2024 WSA global congress and will benefit from training and mentoring programmes offered by ESCWA and WSA.
Award Criteria
- Two Strategic Criteria – social/ societal
- Impact: Local impact on community and society in the Arab region, and sustainability and scalability.
- Value: Addressing the United Nations SDGs, narrowing digital divide, and promoting digital inclusion for sustainable development.
- Five Technical Criteria
- Content: Quality and comprehensiveness.
- Functionality: Ease of use, User experience, Appropriate interactivity.
- Design: Navigation, Target groups, and Visual appeal.
- Technology: State of the art in technology and quality of technical realization.
- Innovation: Originality and newness to targeted users, Business model society and market.
Suitable Projects
- Submissions for the ESCWA Award can contain digital Arabic content applications with a clear impact on sustainable development, such as: apps, webpages, portal, e-services, sms-based products, mobile games and mobile applications. There is no limitation regarding the platforms or channels the projects work with.
- All submissions have to be launched products. No drafts, prototypes, demonstrations or unfinished projects can be accepted. The solution needs to prove that it is a working product and demonstrate its impact at the national, regional or international level. All submitted products must have been completed after Jan. 1, 2015. For a project or product completed earlier, the submitters have to indicate the significant improvements and updates that have been made in the period thereafter.
- A product can be submitted for one or more SDGs and the application should specify the main goal(s) addressed and explain the linkage with these goals.
- In case of multiple submissions by the same Institution or Entrepreneur, each product requires a separate application.
- Products that were submitted to this Award in the previous cycles and were not selected as winners, can be re-submitted this year. Applicants should specify the new features/updates, if any, in the new submission for 2023.
Who can Apply?
- ESCWA DAC Award has two categories and is open to institutions and young entrepreneurs from the Arab countries.
- The Institutions category is dedicated to public and private institutions, academia and non-governmental organizations from the Arab region.
- The Young Entrepreneurs category is dedicated to start-ups, teams of young people, and individuals who are younger than 35 years. Participation in this category is for any entrepreneur, company, student group or project team, where at least one of the founding members and the majority of the team is under the age of 35 from any Arab country.
ESCWA Contest Language and Preferences
- The Arabic language is the main language for the submitted products, yet the Award process accepts products in other languages, provided that they serve/support the Arab community and region.
- All submissions and product information in the Award’s application must be either in English or in Arabic.
- Preference is for products that respect data privacy and personal data protection acts.
Exclusions and Disqualification of Submissions
- Incomplete submissions and those not following the ESCWA Award rules and conditions will be withdrawn from the selection process without notice. There is no legal recourse possible against the decision of disqualification for the below reasons. The screening committee of the ESCWA DAC Award have the right to reject submissions/entries without providing any further reason and notice. Incomplete or non-operational products during the time of evaluation might lead to disqualification. Submitters are held responsible to make sure their products are accessible and functioning for Jury and evaluation process.
- Further reasons for exclusion or withdrawal include lack of ownership of creative rights or infringement of copyrights of others, false registration information, and non-confirmation to the rules of the contest guidelines.
For more information, visit ESCWA.