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RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Kalimpong, April 6: Students of the Kendriya Vidayala here will participate in a worldwide voting tomorrow to elect the winner of the Global Friends’ Award, 2007. The school will be the first in the subdivision to take part in the unique exercise.

Eleven million pupils from 20,000 schools spread across the world will vote this year to elect the winner from among the three nominees — Inderjit Khurana of India, Cynthia Maung of Myanmar and Betty Makoni of Zimbabwe (see chart).

The voting opened globally on January 15 and will close on April 12. The D-Day for about 150 students from Classes VI to X of the Kendriya Vidyalaya here will be tomorrow when they will put a cross on their preferred choice in the ballot papers before putting them in the box. “The children are very excited to be a part of a global event. In the process, they have also learnt about people like this year’s nominees who have been making a difference to the lives of under-privileged children globally,” said Raj Narayan, a teacher at the school who is coordinating the voting here.

The Global Friends’ Award, 2007, is part of the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child, first instituted in 2000 by Children’s World, a Swedish organisation. It is given to a person (adult or child) or an organisation that has done outstanding work for children in accordance with the UN convention on the rights of the child.

Apart from the main prize, one of the three nominees will also receive the World’s Children’s Prize, whose winner is selected by an international jury of children who are experts on the rights of child through first-hand experiences as soldiers, refugees, street children or slaves. One or two of the three nominees who do not win either of the first two awards are given the World’s Children’s Honorary Award.

This year’s total prize money is US$ 140,000.

The award ceremony will be held at Gripsholm Castle in Mariefred, Sweden, on April 16. The winners will be announced three days earlier, on April 13, in Stockholm.