COMPETITION ❗

Handwritten homeland

The “Amrots” National Development Foundation, within the framework of its “Tsil” program to support young creators, is announcing a youth competition entitled “Handwritten Homeland”.

“Handwritten Homeland” is a research- creation competition.

The idea of ​​the competition is to inspire young individuals to explore and discover their own homeland.

The “Handwritten Homeland” competition must reflect the applicant’s perception of the homeland based on research conducted on the history of their own family tree (at least 2 generations). The essence of the application cannot be limited to a literary work about their own family tree. The submitted work must emphasize content that characterizes the Armenian homeland.

The age limit for competition participants is 18 years of age and under 26 years of age at the time of application.

The deadlines for accepting applications for the competition are: 11.07.2024-20.08.2024

The competition has two stages:

• Evaluation of applications by the jury,
• Interview with the participants who passed the first round.

The winners of the competition will receive a cash prize:

The criteria for evaluating applications in the first stage will have two separate areas:

• literary-creative
• historical-research.

Literary criteria refer to the literary value, quality, and literacy of the submitted literary work.

Historical-research criteria refer to the quality of the research component of the application, assessing the quality, accuracy, and scholarly quality of the applicant’s research and its reflection in the literary work.

The third criterion of the competition is the ideological one, which will be assessed through an interview with the participants who have passed the second round.

First stage: evaluation of applications.

The competition application includes:

• Personal data,
• Documents and sources of research work on the history of one’s own family tree,
• A literary work based on research (can be a story, essay, review, or poem).

Supporting documents documenting research into one’s family history may include:

• Illustration
• Archival/family photos or videos
• Family/genealogical notebooks/diaries
• Ethnic traditions, customs, holidays, rituals, etc.
• Ethnic cuisine, dishes
• Armenian cultural elements (paintings) in the family’s possessions (clothes, dishes, carpets, furniture, etc.)
• Description of the settlement of the tribe in different regions (photos), description of relocations, facts
• Participation of the ethnic group in various historical episodes (interesting records)

Please note: literary works and research files should not contain the applicant’s personal information (name, surname, phone number, etc.).

The literary work must be:

• Maximum 1500 words,
• In A4 format,
• In Sylfaen font,
• with 1.5 line spacing,
• Filled in 11 font size.

There are two application methods for the competition: online and by mail.

Second stage:

Interview with applicants who scored a passing score or higher in the first round.

The passing score will be determined during the first round of evaluation, taking into account the number of applicants and the works with the highest and lowest scores.

The composition of the competition jury is:

Gor Harutyunyan – poet, publicist, literary critic, educator

Mher Israelyan – prose writer, military diplomat

Astghik Karapetyan – PhD, YSU lecturer, teacher of Armenian language and literature at the “AYB” school

Lilit Minasyan – historian, history teacher at “AYB” educational complex

Manan Dafin – ethnographer, cultural historian

Mikayel Malkhasyan – historian, PhD, Associate Professor of the Department of History, Yerevan State University

Competition rules:

By applying to the competition, the participant confirms that he/she has been informed and agrees to the terms and conditions below:

a) The submitted work was written by the author himself, without any outside participation or support. In the case of a text work, support may be limited exclusively to the correction of spelling and punctuation errors.

b) The submitted literary work is new, was written for submission to the competition and has not been nominated for any other competition.

c) The “Tsil” program may publish the participant’s work(s) on its website or other platforms (including thematic exhibitions) without any profit-making purposes, while preserving the author’s rights. Participants are free to publish, publish and otherwise use their winning works in the competition after the program publishes them.

d) Incomplete and carelessly submitted applications will not be accepted. Participants must strictly adhere to the specified volumes and deadlines.

To apply for the competition, please follow the link below:

If you have any questions, you can write to germcommunity@gmail.com or to the social pages of the “Tsil” program.