[Imc-beirut] Help needed: Civil Rights in the Middle East Essay Contest

[Roheet Shah]

Hello,

My name is Roheet Shah, and I am an intern with the American Islamic
Congress, and its project, HAMSA (Hands Across the Mideast Support Alliance)
based out of Boston. I came across your e-mail address from a website
cateloguing Egyptian NGOs, and  I am writing today to ask for help in
regards to a project I am working on in Civil Rights in the Middle East.

The project is the promotion of an essay contest on Civil Rights in the
Middle East. The contest has two parts: one for Middle Eastern youth (25 and
younger) and one for American youth (25 and younger). To participate, all
one has to do is write a brief essay (600-2,000 words) addressing one of the
questions below. Winners - selected by a group of celebrity judges,
including Gloria Steinem, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and Norman Hill  - will
receive a $2,000 prize, with other prizes for top essays. For more
information on the contest, please visit:
http://www.hamsaweb.com/essay-contest.php

Specifically, I would like to ask for your help in publicizing this
opportunity to any of your contacts who might be interested in the contest,
or who might be able to further  reach young peoples in the Egypt or the
Middle East.

For you convenience, I have included a short announcement about the essay
contest below this e-mail, and attached a flyer about it to this e-mail.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, and thank
you in advance,

--Roheet Shah
Program Intern
American Islamic Congress (www.aicognress.org)
roheet at aicongress.org

====================

I write to inform you about a new essay contest launched by the American
Islamic Congress on civil rights in the Middle East.  Anyone under the age
of 26 can enter, and finalists can win up to $2,000 in cash prizes.

The "Dream Deferred Essay Contest" (see
*http://www.hamsaweb.org*<http://www.hamsaweb.org/>) challenges young
Americans and young Middle Easterners to express
constructive ideas for individual rights in the world's least-free region.

Judges for the essay contest include Gloria Steinem (founder of Ms.
Magazine), the Cato Institute's Tom Palmer, Azar Nafisi (author of Reading
Lolita in Tehran), as well as noted Middle Eastern bloggers Ammar Abdulhamid
of Syria and Mahmoud Al-Yousif from Bahrain.

We are hoping to awaken young people to the reform efforts of indigenous
Middle Eastern progressives and to engage them in this discussion.  Several
hundred people have already submitted essays, but we would like to reach out
to students on campus so you can enter before our deadline, on March 31st,
2006.

We hope you consider submitting an essay,  and please feel free contact me
at roheet at aicongress.org with any questions or concerns.

Thank you,

--Roheet Shah

roheet at aicongress.org
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