Two young local artists will be winging their way to New York next month courtesy of Cathay Pacific after they won a major United Nations art competition. Elizabeth Au Chung-ning, 16, and Grace Tsang Ji-yan, 11, were named this week as two of six winners of the UN's International Children's Art Competition, picked from over 12,300 entries from 124 countries. Their pictures will become a series of stamps to mark International Eradicate Poverty Day on October 17. However, the prize did not cover travel expenses to attend the award ceremony in New York. Henry Lau Ho-cheung, who runs Simply Art, the tutorial school in Mong Kok where Elizabeth and Grace take art classes, said the Education Bureau had approached the airline about two weeks ago. While there had been a positive response, they had not seen anything in writing until this week. 'We just received it in black and white,' Mr Lau said on Thursday. The sponsorship includes flights for the award winners and their parents. Quince Chong, Cathay Pacific's director of service delivery, said: 'We were extremely impressed by the fact that of the six winning designs chosen from 12,000 entries around the world, Hong Kong got two awards. We are very proud of their achievements.' Wong Chung-po, a senior curriculum development officer of the Education Bureau's gifted education department, said officials were hoping to set up a system to assist students in similar situations in future. 'We want to get a mechanism put in place so that parents can get in touch with potential sponsors more directly,' he said. 'That may include a trust fund.'