Watan Document will participate in “This is My Story 2023” competition for the best realistic short story

Stemming from the vision and goals of the “Watan Document” Foundation, which is to spread awareness of the importance of people’s participation in writing our history with our own hands, and to access people’s stories directly in order to record the facts and details of the events they went through, and with the aim of integrating different age groups and segments of society into the history process by telling their stories and memories, the Foundation announced opening the door for participation in its annual competition “This is My Story 2023” for the best realistic short story.

In a statement, the Foundation called on Syrians to write short realistic stories that they witnessed the events for themselves, and that bear human values, in all areas of life.

The conditions of the competition requires submitting the story in Arabic and to be based on realistic events that show the places and dates of their occurrence, and were witnessed by the story owner himself. Stories based on imagination or on conclusion or transmitted from people or other sources and stories that contain abuse or breach of the law or public morals will be excluded.

The Foundation indicated that participation is open to all Syrians residing inside or outside Syria, noting that the competition is divided into four age groups, the first is under 18 years, the second category is between 19 years to 30 years, the third is from 31 years to 45 years, and the fourth category is for ages over 45 years old.

The Foundation indicated that the stories will be subject to arbitration according to criteria approved by the jury, and the winners will be announced after communicating with them. Three valuable prizes (gold, silver, and bronze) are allocated to each category. The awards are announced and handed over to their owners in a cultural celebration.

In a statement to SANA, Musa Al-Khoury, Projects Manager of the “Watan Document Foundation” ,stated that for the fifth year in a row, the Foundation has launched “This is My Story” competition, due to its success in previous years. So, this success prompted members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees to dedicate it annually, calling on all Syrians to share their real-life stories that they experienced.

Al-Khoury stressed that the stories form a collective memory for people, and preserving them allows future generations to view them and learn about people’s stories in the stage they are currently living in, in addition to that they constitute a rich material for researchers that enables them to write history. Thus all Syrians will be involved in writing the history of their country.

He clarified that “This is my story for the year 2023” encourages a return to writing memoirs and falls within the framework of spreading awareness of the importance of documentation and oral history, which is the approach of the Watan Document.

The “Watan Document” Foundation had launched the “This is My Story” award for the first time in the summer of 2019, to spread awareness of the importance of oral history, and to enrich the national archive of knowledge with realistic oral narratives witnessed by its writers themselves.

It is worth noting that the “Watan Document” is a non-governmental and nonprofit knowledge institution, established in Damascus in 2016. It is concerned with oral history to preserve and document memory in various aspects of life.

Inas Abdulkareem