DUBAI // Dieters have three days to register for the chance to swap kilograms of weight for grams of gold.
The deadline for the Your Weight in Gold campaign is Thursday, and organiser Dubai Municipality has already registered 15,000 people.
Registrations are up on last year, when 10,000 people signed up in July but only 3,224 made it to the end a month later on August 20.
The authority paid out around 16.872kg of gold in last year’s campaign, costing at the time, about Dh2.6 million.
Ismail Al Banna, director of corporate marketing department at Dubai Municipality, said that although the authority had hit its target of 15,000 applicants, registrations would continue until July 24 as there was an “open budget”.
“Since we aspire to be the number one in everything we do, we wish Dubai to be one of the healthiest cities in the world, and we need all our citizens and residents to be aware of our aims,” he said. “We believe that the people are the real assets of our city, so we take care of their health to build a beautiful future for our beloved city.”
The minimum to lose over the campaign will be 2kg. Individuals will get a gram of gold per kilo lost, while people who register as families will get two grams per kilo.
The final weigh-ins will be on September 10 to 15, although participants will be notified when and where they need to do the weigh in.
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Moral education needed in a 'rapidly changing world'
Moral education lessons for young people is needed in a rapidly changing world, the head of the programme said.
Alanood Al Kaabi, head of programmes at the Education Affairs Office of the Crown Price Court - Abu Dhabi, said: "The Crown Price Court is fully behind this initiative and have already seen the curriculum succeed in empowering young people and providing them with the necessary tools to succeed in building the future of the nation at all levels.
"Moral education touches on every aspect and subject that children engage in.
"It is not just limited to science or maths but it is involved in all subjects and it is helping children to adapt to integral moral practises.
"The moral education programme has been designed to develop children holistically in a world being rapidly transformed by technology and globalisation."
What is graphene?
Graphene is extracted from graphite and is made up of pure carbon.
It is 200 times more resistant than steel and five times lighter than aluminum.
It conducts electricity better than any other material at room temperature.
It is thought that graphene could boost the useful life of batteries by 10 per cent.
Graphene can also detect cancer cells in the early stages of the disease.
The material was first discovered when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were 'playing' with graphite at the University of Manchester in 2004.
