Presentation of Awards at the Fifth Edition of the “Batalla de los Cuentos” Competition

Presentation of Awards at the Fifth Edition of the “Batalla de los Cuentos” Competition
Santo Domingo, December 9 2015

The office of the Vice President of the Republic, through the Children and Youth Library of the Dominican Republic (BIJRD for its acronym in Spanish), brought the fifth edition of the Batalla de los Cuentos (Batle of the Tales) competition to a close with the presentation of awards to the winning teams. The Batalla de los Cuentos initiative was created to motivate young people and youths to read and compete in a healthy manner.

The competition, whose purpose is to encourage the habit of reading and to promote values such as solidarity, friendship, respect and responsibility in young people between the ages of 13 and 18, came to an end at a ceremony that was headed by the Vice President of Republic, Dr. Margarita Cedeño. In this year’s edition, 364 young people from 65 schools from Santo Domingo and the National District participated. 91 teams, of four members each, worked for two months to complete the forms containing questions related to the works and stories they had read during the competition, which referred to the characters, the plot and the writer of the work, among others.

In this edition of the Batalla de los Cuentos, participants analyzed the works of important Dominican and Latin American storytellers, including Juan Bosch, Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Ángela Hernández, Pedro Peix, Virgilio Díaz Grullón, Jeannette Miller, Emelda Ramos and Carmen Imbert Brugal.

Also, Colombian and Nobel Prize for Literature, Gabriel García Márquez; Mexican Juan Rulfo; Argentinian Julio Cortázar; Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga; and, Czech Franz Kafka, among others.

The jury was composed by writer Dulce Elvira de los Santos, Director of the BIJRD; writer and playwright Reynaldo Disla; and the winner of the National Youth Award 2013, poet Jimmy Feliz. The Director of the BIJRD indicated that the activity is an initiative of the Vice President of the Republic, Dr. Margarita Cedeño, and that it seeks to promote education, reading and to teach young people the values that will contribute to their development as individuals.

“What differentiates one student from another is reading. What makes the difference between one student and another, definitely is reading. Memorize these words and keep them deep inside of you. Throughout these almost seven years of continuous work at the BIJRD, we have seen dozens of young people transform their lives, once they discovered the habit of reading,” said de los Santos.

She thanked the young people who participated in the competition, who read a fine selection of Dominican and Latin American stories, and who have been able to discover that, through reading, there is another life. Points were added each day, which then allowed for the selection of the four teams with the highest scores. These were the teams that participated in the final battle, in front of a jury made of the authors of the works that had been read. The winners of this year’s competition received mini laptops, Samsung tablets and digital cameras.

The Vice President, Margarita Cedeño, accompanied by the Director of the BIJRD and the jury, presented the award for first place to students Miguel Reynoso, Ambar Gantier, Liliana Martínez and María José Arias Hiciano, from the Monsignor Juan Félix Pepén Polytechnic.

The second place was presented to the team made of Thara Rubí Caba Pineda; Carlos Augusto Vargas Ruíz; María V. Acevedo De La Cruz and Josué Vicente Hirujo Rojas, from Colegio Jaime Molina Mota. And, the third prize was presented to Shirley Santana Herrera, Anyelina Morla Santana, Alva Momfort and Maite Jiménez, of the Mir Foundation Polytechnic.

Francis Fuentes, Luis Miguel Acosta, Nelson Eligio Ogando and Ricardo De la Cruz, who are users of the BIJRD and who also participated in the competition, received an honorable mention. The event was held in the Auditorium of the Mauricio Báez Cultural Center.

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