QU campaign to emphasize power of knowledge

Qatar Today is one of the key partners for this initiative.

Says QU Director of External Communications, Zeina Al Azmeh, "While communications with thorough substance such as articles, conferences and other opportunities for communicating messages about education are important, they typically have limited audience/readership. We thought that we would like to support such initiatives with a campaign carrying short and simple key messages targeting a wider range of audiences.

"The idea was to have a campaign carrying a single-minded key message for each target group to insure focus and effectiveness. Additional messages may continue to be added in response to rising needs. The campaign uses statements by famous authors so that the messages have more credibility but also to raise awareness about who those authors are. The concept of quotations also ties-in nicely with the academic nature of the university since citation is at the core of all academic research."

She adds that as a national University, it has a commitment to society beyond its campus. "Based on that commitment, we are trying through various means (the support of media being one of the most important) to reach a wider audience to enhance existing beliefs that support principles such as dedication to education, rigorous inquiry and lifelong-learning, and hopefully contribute to changing any existing beliefs which may challenge those principles."

The key partners of the programme are Qatar Today and Al Sharq Newspaper.

"Al Sharq Newspaper has been supporting the campaign since last year and Qatar Today has generously accepted to support it as of January 2007. I think everyone who cares about education or about Qatar is a stakeholder. The idea is basically to promote excellence in education.
"Qatar Today's support is generous and highly appreciated. I think it reflects the magazine's sense of social responsibility."

The primary audience for the media campaign are the students, parents and opinion makers.

"However an internal communications campaign is running in parallel with different messages some of them targeting students, others targeting faculty and different ones targeting non-academic staff and leadership," she says.

On the expected impact, Al Azmeh points out, "Successful awareness campaigns usually yield slow but long lasting results. Enhancing existing beliefs that support the principles of lifelong learning, dedication, rigorous inquiry and self-learning are expected to have immediate impact. The real challenge will be changing of any existing beliefs related to education that is the real challenge. Such change is not possible through the media alone, it has to be part of an overall social change and I believe everything in Qatar from the types of conferences being held to the types of educational initiative being undertaken is moving in one direction; a direction that emphasizes the importance of making one's own future through perseverance and dedication to one's education."