Rs. 2.4 m in cash prizes at ComBank’s 4th ‘Arunalu Siththam’ art contest for children

 Past Arunalu Siththam contestants at a workshop organised by Commercial Bank

• This year’s competition opens to Sri Lankan children living overseas 
• Entries to be submitted online; deadline for entries is 15 September

‘Arunalu Siththam’ – the island-wide children’s art competition conducted by the Commercial Bank of Ceylon – has been launched for the fourth year, and the bank has announced it is opening the competition to Sri Lankan children currently living overseas, a new category.

Exclusively for children between the ages of four and 16, the competition is hosted under the banner of the bank’s popular children’s savings account ‘Arunalu’ and will be conducted online this year for the third time, the bank said.

Arunalu Siththam will reward a total of 142 young artists with cash prizes with a cumulative value of Rs. 2.4 million this year and present merit certificates to another 250 contestants. All entries should be submitted online. 

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 of “Our responsibility as children” and “A greener world” respectively, on 14x18 inch paper.

The bank said contestants may choose a medium of their preference to colour their ideas on paper, avoiding sticky and non-drying types of paint.

Entries for Arunalu Siththam 2023 close on 15 September. Contestants can submit their drawings by simply visiting www.arunalusiththam.lk and uploading a scanned copy of their drawing 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, not submitted to any other competition. During submission, applicants should select the correct category (local/foreign) and complete details regarding their full name, date of birth, address, email address, telephone number, name of parent or guardian, name of school and address. When drawings from contestants in the ‘Local’ category are selected for the final round, applicants will be required to send in the hard copies of the drawings to the bank, certified by the contestants’ school principal, deputy principal, Grama Niladhari, or a lawyer. Drawings from contestants in the ‘Foreign’ category selected for the final round will have to be certified by a school principal or deputy principal.

The bank said 25 of the youngest contestants who submit the most creative drawings in the Local 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 Local age 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 Local 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 certificates. Another 50 contestants from each of these four categories will be awarded Merit Certificates. Existing ComBank Arunalu and Isuru account holders at the closing date of the competition will be entitled to a special gift, if they are chosen as winners of cash prizes, the bank said. In the new category created for Sri Lankan children who are resident outside Sri Lanka, the best drawings in each of the five age groups will receive a cash prize of Rs. 50,000.

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.