The Modhesh Friends Forum, an initiative by the Dubai eGovernment that allows children to interact with Modhesh, the mascot of Dubai Summer Surprises (DSS), is turning out to be the biggest attraction among the host of events featured at this year's DSS.
Children can chat live with Modhesh from 10 am to 1 pm every day by logging on to the forum website, www.eModhesh.ae and completing the registration process. Dubai eGovernment has set up kiosks in leading shopping malls and at the Modhesh Fun City to enable children to chat with Modhesh.
In addition to the chat facility, the website also offers children the opportunity to contribute through articles, pictures and paintings on a variety of topics, with exciting prizes awarded to the winners in each category. The Modhesh English Forum has so far received 830 inputs from 63 registered users, whereas the Modhesh Arabic Forum has received a total of 1018 participations from 71 registered users.
Rehab Lootah, eServices Acting Director, Dubai eGovernment, said: "Modhesh Friends Forum is designed to be an excellent entertainment destination for children during the summer holidays, while at the same time providing them an avenue to express their creative talents and learn something new. The forum is part of eGovernment's larger initiative to persuade children to take to Information Technology, so that they become highly IT-literate eCitizens of tomorrow."
Lootah added: "Dubai eGovernment sees DSS as an excellent opportunity to outreach the community and promote Information Technology and encourage the general public to avail of the various e-services offered by our portal www.dubai.ae."
Dubai eGovernment, as a member of DSS Organizing Committee, is also holding a Website creation competition, the winners of which will be decided by a joint committee from Dubai eGovernment and DSS.
"In today's technology-driven world, it is essential that our children are equipped with competitive IT skills, so that they can effectively tackle future challenges. Their talents need to be identified, nurtured and developed for the benefit of society. It is this realization that has prompted eGovernment to organize the Modhesh website competition. Dubai eGovernment will award winners of the competition with a free training course to enhance their web designing skills," Lootah said.
In addition to the Modhesh Friends Forum and the Modhesh Website Competition, Dubai eGovernment is also organizing Playstation Zone and Net Zone, where children can participate in a variety of games. Six lucky participants of Playstation Zone will receive attractive prizes each week, while one Net Zone participant also stands to win a weekly prize.
Dubai eGovernment is a pioneering initiative in the region to provide online services across the spectrum of corporate and community life in the emirate. It also has a vision to integrate
individually automated government departments under the single umbrella of the eGovernment initiative, thus empowering employees across lines of businesses and levels of government, besides facilitating the lives of citizens and customers of the government. Dubai has taken a lead in the region in deploying eGovernment applications and is among the first few governments in the world to provide such integrated services to its citizens. The eGovernment portal (www.dubai.ae) is a single contact point masking the complexity of the bureaucratic procedures, and guiding access to all services in the easiest possible way. In addition, the eGovernment initiative seeks to improve and enhance procedures by maximizing the benefit from technology, so that users from all walks of life will be able to utilize the portal for their specific needs with considerable ease.
