More than 160 Egyptian orphans took part in a Google doodle competition, held for the first time in Egypt and the Middle East. The winning design will be displayed on Egypt's Google homepage google.com.eg on April 3, which marks Orphan Day in Egypt. The day is celebrated annually on the first Friday of April.

Over the past few years, Google has shown more interest in the Middle East, starting with the opening of its Middle East office in Egypt, in 2006. Add to that, Google recently launched a new blog in Arabic.

Teedoz writes about the doodle competition saying:

Mohammadkotb and Ahmed Hamdy published a forwarded email from the Google Student Ambassador at Alexandria University, Amr Ebaid, who explains further details of the competition:

On 20th of March, Google organized the first ever Doodle for Google Competition in the Middle East. We invited over 160 orphans from different orphanages in Egypt at the GUC premises for a fun day. The kids drew AMAZING doodles that exceeded expectations. It was loads of fun, and most importantly, the kids enjoyed it!
Khaled AbulNaga, the Egyptian movie star, attended the event, and he was really touched by the children, and decided to sponsor one of them until he graduates from college!

Commenting on the email, MohammadKotb wrote his reactions after reading it, as well as mentioning the doodles he liked and voted for:

So after reading this email, I went to the link of the doodles and really I found very nice doodles made by the small Egyptians, who are very genius, and I have liked two doodle. The first doodle which is very very simple which is the doodle in the beginning of my post made by a child called Gaber Seror he is 15 years old, and this was the doodle I vote to it. And the second one was the following doodle and it was made by a child called Ahmad Taha who is 11 years old, and the most thing I liked it in this doodle is “Edret el fool” as I love the beans sooooo much

Google doodle by Ahmed Taha, 11 years old.

Noblese also urged people to vote for the winning doodle, in order to encourage young Egyptian talent:

Now, we want the whole world to know how talented Egyptian children are…we want to share this link with everyone, and ask people to vote for the winning doodle. The voting will last until the end of March, so VOTE now and forward to all your friends.

VOTE NOW: http://www.google.com.eg/myegypt – English Version

PLEASE FORWARD and SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS…show the kids that their art was well appreciated.