AL AIN, 15th May, 2017 (WAM) -- The Zayed House for Islamic Culture, ZHIC, has published a series of winning short stories from the Youth Short Stories Competition that was held under the theme "Our Human Values," within the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyans 2016 initiative, Year of Reading.

After declaring the winners of the competitions, honouring them, and selecting suitable stories, ZHIC worked on translating and publishing the winning stories. A total of six stories were translated into Arabic and English.

ZHIC recently distributed the published stories to visitors at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The publication included "To Where the Crescent is Heading," "Al Surra Secret," "The White Mask," "Say Kind Words," "Starting from Al Fajr Prayers" and "Take my Hand." Publishing these stories was the first step in the ZHIC activities in this field. The organisation now seeks to distribute the collection to interested people, achieve educational goals including covering the needs of this generation, enhancing the knowledge of children, and improving their language skills and ideas.

It also aims to strengthen educational and noble human values, promote Arabic language and culture, enrich the cultural scene by providing educational publications that address children and highlight the talent of creative writers. It will also support schools and educational institutes by providing educational and cultural publications.

Dr. Khalifa Al Mehrezi, Head of the Publishing and Translation Department in ZHIC, said that they seek to launch a range of initiatives every year to enrich the concept of reading, confirm its social responsibility, and implement the directives of the wise government. This includes building an intellectual society, bringing up a generation of readers, and promoting the national capital of knowledge and culture.

He highlighted the desire of ZHIC to promote reading as a cultural activity by providing a range of books to libraries.

Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2017.