By Nourhan Badawy

The number of hidden talents among youth in Egypt is uncountable. Between singing, dancing, poetry, and magic talents, many college students have been waiting for the oportunity to be discovered by a wider community, other than family and friends.

Cairo University launched Cairo’s Got Talent, a new show for students that offers a platform from them to display their talents.

The show is organised by a Faculty of Medicine student group, named Forsan Al-Kasr, in cooperation with other student groups from 15 various faculties. The competition mainly aims at discovering the different talents students have in many feilds, as like the international competetion which is aired on TV but on a smaller scale.

Auditions to participate in the competition began in August for a month, taking place in Al-Kasr Al-Ainy’s main conference hall.

Knowing that this opportunity is rare to find, over 500 participants from various faculties in Cairo Unversity applied, yet only 45 qualified for the semi-finals.

The show’s jury includes celebrities such as director Mohamed El-Adl, actress Randa El-Behary, visual artist Doaa El-Desouky and musician Marwan Anwar.

The semi-finals are scheduled to begin early in October, to be diveded into three live shows on 8, 15 and 22 October. Meanwhile, the finals will take place on 29 October, according to a member of Forsan Al-Kasr student group, Marwa Ashraf.

Cairo’s Got Talent is actually an extention of a former student talent show entitled Kasr Got Talent in which only medical students in the first and second years participated. However, university students wanted to generalise the show to include all students at different levels.