Abu Dhabi: If you’ve been in a book-reading slump of late and your fingers are itching to turn the page on the latest thriller, suspense or romance novel, 2016 is the year to renew your love for all things literature.
January 1 will mark “2016 -- Year of Reading in UAE”, declared on December 5 by President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. to fuel a new generation of book lovers and consolidate the UAE’s position as a global capital for culture and knowledge.
“We gave our directives that the year 2016 be the year of reading because reading is the basic skill for a new generation of scientists, intellectual, researchers and innovators,” the President said.
Earlier, His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, declared 2016 as the Year of Reading in UAE, under the guidance of Shaikh Khalifa.
On his Twitter page, Shaikh Mohammad said the country was aiming to become a beacon of knowledge, “just as Baghdad, Andalusia and other civilisations seeking enlightenment were”.
Statistics gathered by the Arab Thought Foundation suggested annual average reading rate for an Arab child is six minutes compared with a 12,000 minute average for children in the West. To put it in perspective, for every six minutes spent reading by an Arab child, a child of similar age in the west will have been reading for 200 hours.
In September, Shaikh Mohammad launched the Arab Reading Challenge (ARC) in a bid to encourage students in the Arab world to make reading a part of their daily routine. The ARC aims for a million students in the Arab world to read 50 million books, which will be achieved through an integrated system for supervising students throughout the academic year.
The ARC will provide cash prizes and incentives to students, families and supervisors who participate. The total value of the incentives will be $3 million (approximately Dh11 million).
