KARACHI, Oct 3: Miss Lubna Kolhoro of the Happy Home High School, was adjudged the best artist, by Aqeel Bilgrami, Aftab Zafar and Arshad Abdulla at the Artfest-2004, organized by the Citizens Foundation and the Arts Council on Sunday.

Two hundred entries were received from 16 schools in three categories - Self-portrait, Pakistani weddings and A day spent with a friend. It was difficult to choose three best entries from each category because of the high standard of the entries. The judges deliberated for quite sometime before finalizing the first three prizes in each category.

Young Radhia Alvi, who volunteers for the Citizen Foundation and is a first year student of dentistry, welcomed the guests and gave an introduction to the NGO, which she said was doing a commendable job in the field of education. She hoped that in subsequent years students from more schools would be invited to participate in the event.

Later, architect Arshad Abdulla outlined the progress of the NGO, which he said he had started with five schools for financially under-privileged students in 1995, and was currently running about 200 schools.

By 2005, he said, the number of the schools was expected to go up to 250. "The target of building 1,000 schools seemed a crazy idea ten years ago, but today with so much support from Pakistanis at home and abroad, it seems achievable," Mr Abdulla said.