The Essay Competition is designed and implemented by the World Bank together with partner organizations that form the Steering Committee. 

Selection criteria
Essays will be graded for their structure and coherence, originality and creativity and the use of thoughtful and concrete proposals/ examples.

Photos and videos will be evaluated on the basis of their relevance to the topic, originality and creativity.

We realize that English, French or Spanish will be foreign languages to many participants; therefore language mistakes will not be penalized, as long as the content is understandable.

We realize that participants may not have the technical skills or the equipment to produce photos and videos, therefore technical quality of the submission will not be evaluated, as long as the image is clearly visible and sound (in video) is audible.

Selection process
The Jury will complete their selections of 8 finalists in the essay category and 3 winners in photo and video categories in April, 2009, after a three-stage review process.

Submissions will be blind-reviewed.

Essay finalists will be invited to present their essays to a panel of experts during the Final Jury. The winner(s) will present their work to the audience of the ABCDE 2009 conference in Seoul, South Korea, in June 2009. The winner of the video category will also have the chance to attend the ABCDE conference for a screening of his or her video.