Organizing the Art Competition this year was way more fun that I thought it would be. The theme for this years’ Art Competition was “Family-Everyone we love”. It was amazing to see the maturity in some of the art work done by the young artists. Some did a simple depiction of love and family bonding while others were about the good times spent together as a family. There were the interesting ones too, like a 5 yr old drew a family of ghosts and she insisted that the ghosts had families! Many children sketched their pets saying that they were part of the family too! The Judges-Natalie Pouliquen, Marie Diop, Sadeem Al-Kadi and Miren Atela, had a tough time deciding the winners from approximately 100 entries and we ended up with a lot of ties.

Ages 3-4
Aardra Sakpal	1st Prize
Srinidhi Sathyanarayanan	2nd Prize
Ema Tominaga	2nd Prize
Audrey Yin	3rd Prize
Ages 5-6
Leila Granier	1st Prize
Chanho Oh	2nd Prize
Dhruv Sundaraman	3rd Prize
Ages 7-8
Elena Wehebrink	1st Prize
Isabela Fernanda Crane-Rodriguez	2nd Prize
Aditi Sundaraman	3rd Prize
Ages 9-11
Jeremiah Manuel	1st Prize
Stepan Casey	2nd Prize
Dina Hadj-Mabrouk	3rd Prize
Dwina Sima Hadj-Mabrouk	3rd Prize

The reception for these young artists was a challenge in itself, to come up with activities that would entertain children from the age group of 3 to 15. Of course we have so much talent in our own organization that after a couple of e-mails back and forth we had the program taking shape. Tara Sharafuddeen, organizer of Celebration of Cultures, helped us get in touch with some very talented artists who had previously performed at the Bank. Mrinalini Pillai and her friend performed a very beautiful Kuchipudi style piece (classical Indian dance). We had Carlos Winder, a WBG spouse and long-term WBFN member, sing songs in many different languages. Just before the certificate distribution, we had a very melodious and beautiful performance by Annemarie Brink Olsen, one of our very dear members.

This year we also had a marathon scrapbooking event at the reception, an idea suggested by Miren, where we had Rula Ghani taking pictures of the artists, the artwork, and the assembled families. Anne Folliet, then printed the pictures then and there, thanks to some useful technology. Once the children had their photos they went to the tables where Miren, Sadeem and lots of other volunteers helped the kids with their scrapbook page. Oh! The materials that the kids used to decorate their page got even the adults present curious and eager to become a child again. It was interesting to see that we had nailed the right activity, one that was popular with all ages!

Swati Srivastava

I want to take this opportunity to thank every volunteer from WBFN who helped us with this event. We were more than 25 of us, each adding their little strokes to the big picture. Events like these are successful only because of the strong volunteer community that we have at WBFN, and it is amazing how people who speak different languages actually come together during these events.