Dubai Customs’ Fifth Year IPR Award due to start

Dubai Customs and Ministry of Education has recently proclaimed the start of “Inter-School Contest for Dubai Customs IPR Award Fifth Cycle” for the year 2010-2011 inviting all government and private schools to take part.  

This came during the meeting that was held at the Ministry of Education’s main building in Dubai. Time arrangements and action plans for the requirements of the contesting projects organized under the sponsorship of Dubai Customs in coordination with the Ministry of Education have been decided.    

The meeting was attended by parties from Dubai Customs, namely, Yousif Aziz Mubarak – Senior Manager of IPR Dept, Mahbooba Bager Hussain- Manager of Customs Awareness & Education Sec at IPR Dept, and from the Ministry of Education, Wafa Alabar an acting Director of the Student Activities Dept and some representatives from the schools which submitted applications of participation. 

Yousif Aziz said: “This contest is open to all 6th graders up to 12th graders in all schools across the country.  Each team from every involved school is expected to prepare, organize and carry out a program in the field of IPR with the aim of serving specific objectives, such as enhancement of a sense of belonging, nationalism, voluntarism amongst all students from government and private schools, thus supporting national identification, establishing IPR orientation and guidance, innovation, protecting the community from commercial and industrial frauds and controlling exploitation of innovative ideas. The organization of this contest comes in line with Dubai Customs continued efforts in enhancing public awareness towards the protection of IPR.

 Mahbooba  Baqer Hussain explained that the contest is achieving  continued success every year. She said: “Requests for new registration and participation are increasing, and we have not put a limit for the schools because the numbers of the participants are growing every year, but the participating projects proposed by the schools must be in compliance to the criteria and objective requirements which have been defined during the workshop earlier held over the past period in coordination with the Ministry of Education and through the circulars noted to the education zones. 

On her side, Wafa Alabbar, an acting Director of Student Activities at the Ministry of Education, on behalf of the ministry expressed appreciation towards Dubai Customs for the efforts done in spreading awareness of the importance of intellectual property rights. She also praised the initiative adopted by Dubai Customs to have launched this award to students for the last 4 years, noting that the new promising youths are in need of such education and culture to maintain themselves, their families and the entire society, and also the youths need to conceive the necessity of maintaining rights of intellectual property & innovation and keep these rights safe from any potential violation. This award reflects a tangible example of the government partnership due to its general benefits and positive impact to society and it goes paralleling inline with directions of our wise leadership, she said. 

The qualified schools, whose projects are to be nominated for the contest within a week, shall choose teamwork members of 15 students in addition to 2 supervisors who will be assigned with the task of drafting out an action plan for carrying out these projects in line with the award key objective requirements. The projects are expected to include events and activities in which students, parents and the local community can participate.