[P2P-F] friends without borders, peace through facebook

Mon Jun 27 11:11:54 CEST 2011

via the starfish and spider newsletter,

Maria Sipka's Column

*“Friends Without Borders” is Catalyzing Friending in Conflict Zones to
Create World Peace*

By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share
their ideas, can we decrease world conflict in the short and long term? Yes.

Some interesting phenomena unfolded recently during a peace research
innovation across eight countries in conflict or post-conflict transition.
These countries (India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Turkey, Albania
and Serbia) identified friending patterns on the social networking site
Facebook.

The results are astounding! Take a look for yourself and see real-time
results published on Facebook’s Peace on Facebook
page<http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=39&F=H>,
of friend connections created each day between people of different
countries, religions, and political affiliations.

[image: maria1.jpg]

It’s interesting to compare the level of friending in relation to the
Facebook populations in these paired countries:
*Israel + Palestine: *High level of Facebook populations and high level of
cross-conflict friending. Great peace-building potential!
*Greece + Turkey: *High level of Facebook populations and very low level of
cross-conflict friending. A great deal of effort will need to be invested to
build connections here.
*Albania + Serbia (post-conflict transition): *High level of Facebook
populations and very high level of cross-conflict friending. Fantastic level
of connections.
*India + Pakistan: *Very low level of Facebook population and very low level
of cross-conflict friending. Great effort to cultivate friending and hard
work on peace-building here.

Social development advisor Jane
Chesher<http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=32&F=H>has
been awarded a UNESCO “Power of Peace” initiative grant to catalyze a
powerful global outreach campaign to foster cross-conflict friendships among
youth 14-25 years in each region.  The initiative is titled Friends Without
Borders<http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=36&F=H>
.

Partnering with Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab and Facebook,
the project’s goal is to promote peace, respect, trust and empowerment
between youth from opposing countries in the four geographic conflicts shown
on the info graphic below using social networking, film and story.

[image: maria2.jpg]

Since the launch of peace.facebook.com in August 2010, the volume of friend
connections made each day in the conflict countries has doubled. Today there
are over 100,000 new friend connections made every day across the conflicts.

The Friends Without
Borders<http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=36&F=H>movement
will scale up and empower the connections by creating a safe and
fun online space to expand the network through peer influence, trust and
respect for the “other.” Facebook analytics will be used to track the impact
of the campaign, along with traffic data provided by promotional ads and
links, including partner outreach.

If you would like to learn more about the Friends Without
Borders<http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=36&F=H>initiative
and become involved you can contact
Jane <http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=33&F=H>through
her website.

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