L to R (Gold Loeries winners): Tshego Kwele, Aviv Weil Head of Facebook Africa’s Creative Shop, Vini Xavier and Cara Brauckman

The Facebook Challenge gives students the opportunity for students to showcase their creativity by working on a digital campaign concept for a worthy cause or non-profit organisation. This forms part of Facebook’s commitment to supporting the development of young African creative talent and building digital skills in the marketing and advertising sector.

This year, Facebook partnered with UN Women to raise awareness around the HeForShe gender equity campaign. Students were challenged to create a powerful, mobile-first Stories ad campaign for HeForShe to help further the cause of gender equality.

Securing gold place, the ‘Know her name’ campaign from the Vega students is a mobile campaign that showcases the accomplishments of female sports stars to set a new precedent for equality in the treatment of men’s and women’s sport

The bronze winning Mandela University students, created a campaign which sought to ‘change the conversation’ and highlight how gender inequality exists not only in the violent and extreme cases, but in the everyday language that we use and the ideologies we feed children. Aimed at men, it encouraged them to take a stand and to call each other out for acts of toxic masculinity, big or small.

Commenting on the winners, Elizma Nolte, Regional Marketing Manager Facebook Africa said: “Congratulations to our Facebook Student Challenge winners for the creativity they applied in creating high-impact social campaigns challenging gender stereotypes. We look forward to working with the students and UN Women to bring the Gold winning campaign for #HeForShe to life on Facebook and Instagram. Gender equality remains an important topic globally, and we are excited to be a champion of the Unstereotype Alliance South Africa chapter launched by UN Women at the Loeries this year, which seeks to drive change for equal gender representation in advertising.”

During Loeries Creative Week (19-25 August), Facebook also hosted workshops and a Student Hackathon for the creative community – including advertising students. The hackathon challenged students to think creatively about using platforms such as Instagram stories to tell rich, creative brand stories.