The 2020 inaugural competition for secondary school students investigating the Australian Lebanese story

Unfortunately, Covid-19 seriously disrupted the inaugural Australian Lebanese Historical Society Competition for Secondary School Students. During 2020, teachers right across Australia have had to do twice the preparation for classes during lockdown, when lessons went online, then back to the classroom, then back again online. Students, particularly Senior students, suffered more than the usual stress of study for the same reason. For teachers, trying to encourage students to undertake an extra task such as the ALHS Competition, and students attempting to complete this task to competition level also proved too difficult in this Covid-19 year. As a result, the Competition was not feasible this year.

The ALHS Board has decided to wait until 2022 to announce another competition. We hope that 2021 will be less stressful for all Australians, especially for students and their teachers. We hope that the twelve-month interval will mean that 2022 will be post Covid-19 in Australia, but, of course, that is an unknown at the moment.

However, the writing of our Australian Lebanese history by ALHS members does not have to wait until 2022. We welcome receiving your family stories, and would be happy to publish them in our newsletter or on our website. There have been some very interesting developments when people from around the world have read these stories and found family connections they did not know about. Through our newsletter and website, some ALHS members have asked for help in finding information about ancestors or identification of faces or places in photos, and have had their questions answered through the world-wide readership.

Take up the challenge!