By: Malak Sherif
MEPRA (Middle East Public Relations Associations) pitch challenge is a unique competition that is held in the middle east to be the voice of public relations professions. It helps gather students and faculty members from many different backgrounds to create an interactive virtual event that consists of workshops that enhances their knowledge on communications as well as to further their professional skills in general.
This competition was held on Saturday 17th April and continued to 18th April 2021 the next day as it is a two-day timeline competition. It holds teams that are of 5 members or less. In this competition students are asked to respond to an interaction set by the Emirates Literature Foundation and take part in the live pitch as AUE was part of it for the first time. The whole process was under the supervision of the dean of CMMC Ms. Dahlia Mahmoud.
Furthermore, an interview was conducted with the students who were able to join from AUE to get more details as to how they felt about this competition. Ayesha Ali who is a 19yo Graphic Designer currently enrolled proceeded to mention that it was a great opportunity for her as a designer to gain such an experience at such a young age especially that it was her first time to design a campaign that too for Emirates Fly. When asked about the time to prepare for such a competition she said, “Actually 48 hours before but since it already began, we had only 6 hrs to do everything for the campaign.” In which she also added that it was a challenge to do so but she likes challenges especially if it is in a field that she is interested in.
Her other teammate Maryam Abdulkareem who is also a 20yo graphic designer said, “it was a very exciting experience that I have never been through that helped me improve the way I think while doing a project or participating in other competitions.” Both Maryam and her teammate stated that their greatest achievement was that they could cooperate well as a team while supporting, motivating, and performing the work together. Overall, they both said that it was a great experience in which they would also like Ms. Dahlia for giving them this opportunity. Although they did not win, they were still so proud of how much they could achieve as a group in such a short period of time.
For future consideration, the registration process goes as follows, if you are not from aue then you could visit the link https://www.mepra.org/events/studentpitchchallenge/ to see more details and register, but if you are already a media student at AUE then you are automatically added to a MS Teams group where you can contact MS. Dahlia the Dean of CMMC in which she will add your name to the list of contestants when and if there are future competitions coming up.
