1st Pancyprian Award in the “Short Story” category in the 9th Panhellenic Competition “Cyprus – Greece – Greek Diaspora: Educational Bridges”

Lemesos
April 2023

We are proud to announce a great success of PASCAL Private English School Lemesos. Year 10 pupils, Varnavas Georgiou and Marios Karaolis, won the 1^st Pancyprian Award in the 9^th Panhellenic Competition “Cyprus – Greece – Greek Diaspora: Educational Bridges”. Our pupils participated in the short story category, with their short story “The Refugee”. This is a great achievement since our pupils had to compete against pupils from both public and private schools across the island.

The award-winning short story met the competition criteria and managed to convey the plight of refugees after 1974 post-war Cyprus, thus emphasising the historical significance in building a new world after the death and destruction precipitated by war.

Marios and Varnavas combined indirect characterisation (through the Teacher-Father figure) with linguistic simplicity, forming their personal writing style by using a variety of narrative techniques.

The Competition, “Cyprus – Greece – Greek Diaspora: Educational Bridges”, is co-organised annually by the Directorate of Primary Education of Serres, the Embassy of Cyprus in Greece, the Ministry of Interior (Macedonia-Thrace) and the Department of Educational Radiotelevision and Digital Media of the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs of Greece.

The competition is open to pupils of all kindergarten, elementary, and high schools of Greece, Cyprus, and the Greek Diaspora, both private and public, and is under the aegis of the President of the Republic of Cyprus. The main goal of this project is to form an educational “bridge” between Cyprus, Greece and Greek diaspora and to foster communication and collaboration among pupils.

“Imagination and creativity are a source of inspiration for expanding intellectual horizons.” – Valentinos Tsaoushis (Greek and Religious Knowledge teacher)