By Joseph Varghese/Staff Reporter

QatarDebate Centre, an initiative of Qatar Foundation will host an international Arabic schools debate championship in March next year. This was announced  by Dr Abdellatif Sellami, QatarDebate’s educational programmes manager, yesterday.
Speaking about the activities of the centre for the season 2013-14 at a press conference held at the Student Centre of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Sellami said that QatarDebate will also start debate competitions for preparatory schools from this academic session. Ali S al-Mufta, QatarDebate’s communications director, and Jamal al-Baker, QatarDebate’s events manager, also took part in the press conference.
Giving the details of international Arabic Debate championship, Sellami said that it was the second edition of the International Arabic Schools Debating Championship. “The first ever Arabic debate championship for schools was conducted in 2012 in which 21 nations had participated. A big event of this type needs a lot of preparations and this year the championship will be held in March next year.”
The official also said that QatarDebate planned to open a library and start its own publications. “We have plans to start two publications of which the date and time are still to be decided. One of them will be bilingual in Arabic and English and the other one will be in Arabic.”
Sellami said that the inclusion of preparatory schools for debate was another initiative by the centre this year. “So far there were debate competitions only for the high schools and university students. We found that nurturing debate culture at the early stages would benefit the students immensely and therefore we decided to incorporate a programme for the preparatory schools.”