The Faculty of Letters in the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik organized a gathering during which prizes were distributed to the winners of the “Award of Father Louis El-Hage for best song lyrics about Lebanon” that witnessed the participation of 53 participants from various Lebanese regions who presented texts in spoken and written Arabic, French and English. The winner of the first prize which amounted to 5 000 USD was Miss Claude Ashkar for her French text “Rendez-moi mon Liban” (Give me back my Lebanon). The two second prizes were equally won by Pamela Layoun for her text in English and Father Youhanna Jeha for his text in written Arabic; they both won a valuable collection of university books published by the Faculty of Letters. Twenty other texts that are to be published by the Faculty got as well the appreciation of the panel and two other texts of Elias Chedid and Joseph El-Hage got an award of excellence.

The panel was presided by the Dean of the Faculty of Letters Professor Tanios Njeim and comprised Dr. George Kerbage (for Arabic), Dr. Sophie Salloum (for French) and Hiba Moussa (for English).

Professor Njeim delivered a speech for the occasion in which he stressed on three ideas he thought about when this award was created: the first is the importance of creative poetic and artistic initiatives in the university; the second is the constant concern that Lebanon be one of the major themes of our poets and composers’ creations and the third idea is the lesson to be learned from the award of father Louis El-Hajj who is well renowned and whose creations and reputation are spread in the entire world. He finally concluded by stressing that this initiative reunites academic education and artistic talents and sheds the light on the righteous national issues.