Facebook Is Investing In Community Building

Earthquake in Nepal? Hurricane in Florida? Facebook wants to make sure that victims of these natural disasters get timely help. Last year, the social media giant launched the Community Help program, making it easier for people to seek or ask for help during a crisis. This initiative enabled organizations to help build communities and give a helping hand to people during unforeseen events such as earthquakes or floods.

Community Help A Lifesaver

According to Facebook, Community Help feature was used by people for more than 500 different crises. Users have also engaged with this feature more than 750,000 times via posts, comments and messages. The feature was primarily used for raising awareness about volunteer opportunities, shelter, food and clothing donations.

Last year, Community Help proved to be a lifesaver during the flooding in Brazil in May, Hurricane Harvey in the U.S., an attack in Barcelona, flooding in Mumbai in August, and an earthquake in Central Mexico in September.

On February 15, the social networking site announced a new update to its Community Help initiative. Organizations or businesses can now post in Community Help and provide services and critical information for victims so they get the help they need during the time of crisis. This includes information regarding food and medical supply, free transportation, volunteer information, and more.

According to Engadget, in the coming weeks, Facebook will roll out this new feature to pages for organizations like Direct Relief, Lyft, Chase, Feeding America, International Medical Corps, The California Department of Forestry and Fire, and Save the Children.

The social media giant is hoping that the new features on Community Help will help more people in the coming days.

Earlier this month, at the Facebook Communities Summit Europe, the social media giant announced the Facebook Community Leadership Program, a global initiative that invests in people building communities. Besides investing tens of millions of dollars in the program, up to $10 million in grants will go directly to people creating and leading communities.

In addition, to enable and empower local communities, Facebook has introduced a bew set of tools for admins to run and manage their groups better.

#Facebook planning to change the way it presents news to users with 'quality news' system https://t.co/Bk82lPH1ng

— RT (@RT_com) February 18, 2018