Corporate jungle: Bahria wins most awards at IBA youth festival

KARACHI:

For the last six days, the Institute of Business Administration was a corporate battleground.  As the trend for inter-school and university events and competitions is steadily increasing, the business school decided to organise a festival which focused on friendly competitiveness.

There were eight social events, workshops for filmmakers, actors, gaming zones for anyone who wanted to play counter-strike, music gig and corporate brand brawls. The festival kicked off on February 28 with around 320 students from 25 schools across the city and province participating.

The real brain behind the event was Mirza Jehangir Baig. He came up with the idea after realising that ‘youth activism’ was lacking ‘action’. The festival was not organised to fight over who was the best but a competition of talent. Students were allowed to register through their schools and independently too.

According to the organisers, there were quite a few rewarding moments during the six day event. “In the singing competition we found a 22-year-old young man who looks like he can make it as the next Rahat Fateh Ali Khan,” said Baig. “We also found a student from Bahria University who imitated Amir Liaquat marvelously in the talent competition.” He added that the teams participating in the brand wars were selling SIM cards.

Students could be seen roaming around the main IBA campus, practicing and preparing for debates and talent shows. A group of girls from The City School were busy discussing ideas and figuring out how to take a picture from different angles for the photography competition. ‘Think out of the box,” said one of them. “It’s Amean J!”

This event, like many others at IBA was organised by the students.

They usually do it with minimal or no help from the staff or administration. The organisors marketed the event quite well by nominating a brand ambassador in other schools and universities to publicise the event. According to Ayesha Mehkeri, this plan of action worked out for the best as a second year student from Jinnah Medical and Dental College managed to bring about 25 people from her college and the Ismaili community.

Names of the champions were announced at the final social event of the festival. Bahria University bagged the highest number of awards, followed by IBA and JMDC.  Greenwich University stood out in sports while IBA won most of the corporate competitions.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2012.