Nguyen Ngoc Yen Nhu, a 9-year-old primary pupil from Vietnam’s southern province of Long An, and another girl from Thailand, won the first prize for Asia from an International Children’s Drawing Contest on the theme of Gender Equality.

The contest, organised by the European Commission on the occasion of International Women's Day 2008, aims to call on children in third countries to express their vision of women/men equality.

Among nearly 26,000 drawings from all over the world submitted to the contest, 14 of them were selected for awards. In particular, the jury consisted of European children aged 8-10 years.

The contest, launched in Vietnam earlier this year, got 3,000 entries. The best ten drawings were sent to Brussels for the international selection round. The Vietnamese awarded drawing, named “Both boys and girls are playing together”, brought a sum of EUR500 to the girl in Long An.