The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has announced that the Bank’s popular children’s art competition ‘Arunalu Siththam’ is back for a third year, extending an invitation to young Sri Lankans countrywide to express themselves through their artistic talents.

Open to children between the ages of four and 16, the competition hosted under the banner of the Bank’s popular children’s savings account ‘Arunalu’ will reward young artists with 137 cash prizes of a cumulative value of Rs 2 million. Another 250 participants will also receive merit certificates. Following the success of last year’s online competition, the 2022 edition too will take place online, the Bank said.

Participants can submit their drawings under five categories: Pre-school (ages 4-5), Primary (ages 6-7), Post Primary (ages 8-10), Junior (ages 11-13), and Senior (ages 14-16). While the younger contestants will have complete freedom to draw on a topic of their choosing on A3 size paper, participants in the Junior and Senior Categories are requested to create art exploring the themes – ‘Becoming a good child,’ and ‘Humanity,’ respectively, on 14×18 inch paper.

As the competition is designed to promote creativity among children, draw out hidden talent and encourage artistic flair, the Bank said the competitors may choose a medium of their preference to colour their ideas on paper, avoiding sticky and non-drying types of paint.

Applicants can submit their drawings and paintings by simply visiting www.arunalusiththam.lk any day between the 1st September and 15th October 2022 and uploading a scanned copy of their completed art along with the relevant details. The drawing should be in JPEG format and should not exceed 5MB in file size. Submissions are limited to one drawing per contestant and should be an original piece of work, never-before submitted to any other competition.

During submission, applicants will be asked to complete details regarding their full name, date of birth, address, email address, telephone number, name of parent or guardian, and name of school and address. When a drawing is selected for the final round, applicants will be required to send in the hard copy of the drawing to the Bank. Upon winning a prize, the original drawing must be certified by the child’s school principal, Grama Niladhari, a lawyer or by a Justice of the Peace.

The Bank said 25 of the youngest contestants who submit the most creative drawings in the Pre-School category will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 10,000 each with certificates. Another 50 participants in this category will also receive Merit Certificates.

Furthermore, the drawings that win first place in the other four categories will each be awarded a cash prize of Rs 100,000, while the second and third placed drawings in these categories will receive cash prizes of Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively, along with certificates.

In each of the Post-Primary, Primary, Junior and Senior categories 25 contestants will also receive Awards of Excellence with cash prizes of Rs 10,000 each along with 100 certificates. Another 50 contestants from each of these four categories will be awarded Merit Certificates. All cash prizes will be credited to Arunalu Children’s Savings Accounts of Commercial Bank.

Commercial Bank will reserve all rights to the submitted drawings and all decisions made by a veteran panel of judges regarding winners will be final, the Bank said.

Commercial Bank launched the ‘Arunalu Siththam Art Competition’ in 2017. The flagship children’s savings account of Commercial Bank, Arunalu, after which the competition was named, offers a higher interest rate for Children’s Savings Accounts and rewards account holders with special cash prizes if they score the first, second or third highest aggregate marks in their schools at the Year 5 Scholarship Examination.

Sri Lanka’s first 100% carbon neutral bank, the first Sri Lankan bank to be listed among the Top 1000 Banks of the World and the only Sri Lankan bank to be so listed for 12 years consecutively, Commercial Bank operates a network of 268 branches and 940 automated machines in Sri Lanka. Commercial Bank is the largest lender to Sri Lanka’s SME sector and is a leader in digital innovation in the country’s Banking sector. The Bank’s overseas operations encompass Bangladesh, where the Bank operates 19 outlets; Myanmar, where it has a Microfinance company in Nay Pyi Taw; and the Maldives, where the Bank has a fully-fledged Tier I Bank with a majority stake.