Writer: Khalid Mohammed
Editor: Maram Mohammed
Traverse 2019 is the biggest High School Students Summit in all of Egypt, where many students, colleges, influencers, and entrepreneurs get to interact with and inspire one another. This event, hosted by iSpark at the Greek Campus, was also a great opportunity for media creators to showcase their skills and gain valuable experience. One of these media creators was 3alsatr.
3alsatr is a platform by the youth for the youth, dedicated to showcasing the wonderful, inspiring, and successful Egyptians who are doing big things and following their dreams.
“Inspiring, informative, entertaining, and exciting. That’s 3alstar for me.”
-Founder Karim Elsayed
“Personally, I believe 3alsatr’s platform gives a chance for many young individuals such as myself to flourish and share their stories with the world.”
-Photographer Yusra
The initiative to become the media sponsors for Traverse goes back a year prior, 2018. 3alsatr’s team was so mesmerized by Traverse‘18 that the moment they left they’d already decided they were going to cover the next Traverse, no matter what. So, once iSpark announced Traverse’19, the entire team immediately started working on their proposal and plans for the event.
“-Interviewer: So, you just emailed your content plan to the event coordinators and were quickly accepted?
-Founder Karim: Yes, that’s exactly how it went.”
This goes to show that if you just put in the effort and put your work out there, people will notice.
The amount of preparation and effort they put in the project was immense, and it certainly paid off, as they were able to provide plenty of content during the event which made them stand out amongst the crowd.
It is quite empowering to see our generation thriving and providing content that bigger corporates are less willing to provide.
At Traverse, 3alsatr’s 4-man photography team quickly dispersed and set up camp to take pictures of the stage and audience from unique angles.
One of the things that really stood out to us was the interview they shot with Mazen Yassen (@justagoproer), which you can find on their IG page, and is phenomenal to say the least.
Of course, we wanted to get up-close and personal with the behind the scenes of the project. We managed to sneak a couple of amusing stories from 3alstar’s team members; here’s a couple of them:
“Well, traverse was kind of unorganized at first and they didn’t recognize the media at all. They treated us like any other attendees. When we went up to the main building, there were a lot of people. After a while, a staff member came up to us and started to tell people to disperse a bit. So, we started packing our stuff, but he came up to us and asked “Are you media? If you are, you can stay.” At that moment we felt very special and appreciated.”
-Photographer Danah
“At one point we took a break from work to have lunch, and when we got back to work, we noticed our tripod was missing. Everyone started freaking out and we legitimately thought we’d lost it. Turns out a team member had forgotten about it at the stage and left it there. We went back and it was right where he’d left it. Everyone started scolding him about it, it was really funny.”
– Co-Founder Nour Morsy
Covering Traverse was 3alsatr’s greatest achievement yet. It was the first event where they had to learn to move quickly and efficiently, compete for opportunities, and come up with questions and conversation-starters on the spot. They also got real-life advice for planning their futures and a taste of the unique minds, personalities, and talents here in Egypt. They proved to be responsible and more than capable to tackle such an important event, and we are happy to say that we are proud.
Conclusively, everyone, we just wanted to let you know that Gen-Z is certainly here to thrive, and we can’t wait to be blown away by more talented people.
