As you are aware, Pak NGOs announced a writing competition to celebrate World Population Day. We were pleased to receive more than 70 submissions. However, not all submissions met the basic requirements, and only 68 articles were reviewed. Out of these, 24 were disqualified due to excessive use of AI.
We are delighted that many young writers, including students from various universities and recent graduates, participated in this competition. Winning this competition is not the main goal. Our primary objective is to raise awareness about the critical issue of overpopulation.
This competition was a means to encourage thought and discussion on this often-overlooked topic. Therefore, if you did not win, do not be discouraged. Continue to focus on and highlight this core issue. We all succeed when we make progress in addressing it.
We would like to share some observations from the competition with the hope that writers will consider these points for future submissions:
Plagiarism: One participant copied an article from an Indian website, made minor changes, and submitted it. Over 85% of the text matched the original. Plagiarism is not welcome, and you should know that you can’t hide it.
Lacking Depth: Many writers made suggestions without fully understanding or explaining them. For instance, several participants suggested that the government should provide incentives for small families but rarely elaborated on what those incentives could be within Pakistan’s context.
Excessive Use of AI: A significant number of writers submitted content generated by ChatGPT with minimal changes. Out of 68 submissions, 24 have either been banned from the Pak NGOs community or will be banned shortly due to high AI content. Articles found to contain more than 50% AI-generated content were not reviewed by experts. Notably, about nine articles were submitted within 10 minutes of the competition announcement.
Drafting an Email: Only one or two participants wrote a proper, professional email. Most did not include any message in the email body, simply attaching their article or pasting it into the message body. This casual approach impacted their marks. Additionally, some participants whose articles were written in almost perfect English struggled with basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling in their emails. (Not drafting a proper email is highly unprofessional. People do the same when submitting applications for jobs. This needs to be highlighted as well as discouraged.)
Providing References: Few participants provided proper references. Many made claims about population size or growth rate without citing sources. Writers need to learn to provide sources for their information and justify their claims.
Use of Jargon: Several participants used jargon—high-sounding words or phrases that added no value. Our experts preferred simple, easy-to-understand language. The goal was to educate, not to impress.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their outstanding efforts. They deserve special recognition:
- Gul Sher
- Asfand Yar
- Uroosa Khan
- Yousha Khan
- Mahnoor Safeer
- Zaynab Shinwari
- Awais Raza
- Abid Kamal
- Arwa Mohsin
We are pleased to announce the winner and the runner-up of the competition. Here they are:
Loads of congratulations to the winners. We will contact you soon to get your account details to transfer the prize money. The top two articles will be published on our website soon.
Thank you to all participants for your contributions and efforts.
