via the starfish and spider newsletter,<br><br><h1 style="padding-right: 0px; display: block; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px; padding-bottom: 5px; color: rgb(51, 153, 204); border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; letter-spacing: -1px;">
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Maria Sipka's Column</font></h1>
<p><strong>“Friends Without Borders” is Catalyzing Friending in
Conflict Zones to Create World Peace</strong></p>
<p><br> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The results are astounding! Take a look for yourself and see
real-time
results published on Facebook’s <a href="http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=39&F=H" target="_blank">Peace on Facebook page</a>, of friend connections
created
each day between people of different countries, religions, and
political
affiliations.</p>
<p><img title="maria1.jpg" alt="maria1.jpg" height="377" width="539"><br>
<br> It’s interesting to compare the level of friending in
relation to the Facebook populations in these paired countries:<br>
<strong>Israel + Palestine: </strong>High level of Facebook populations
and
high level of cross-conflict friending. Great peace-building potential!<br>
<strong>Greece + Turkey: </strong>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.<br> <strong>Albania +
Serbia (post-conflict transition): </strong>High level of Facebook
populations and very high level of cross-conflict friending. Fantastic
level of connections. <br> <strong>India + Pakistan: </strong>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.</p>
<p>Social development advisor <a href="http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=32&F=H" target="_blank">Jane Chesher</a> 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 <a href="http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=36&F=H" target="_blank">Friends Without Borders</a>.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><img title="maria2.jpg" alt="maria2.jpg" height="420" width="700"></p>
<p><br> Since the launch of <a href="http://peace.facebook.com/" target="_blank">peace.facebook.com</a> 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.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=36&F=H" target="_blank">Friends Without Borders</a> 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.</p>
<p>If you would like to learn more about the <a href="http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=36&F=H" target="_blank">Friends Without Borders</a> initiative and become
involved
you can <a href="http://beckstromwiki.com/starfishreport/link.php?M=3438&N=7&L=33&F=H" target="_blank">contact Jane</a> through her website.</p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br>
<br>Connect: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.ning.com" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.ning.com</a>; Discuss: <a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank">http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation</a><br>
<br>Updates: <a href="http://del.icio.us/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://del.icio.us/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br>
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