Facebook to invest 10M USD in MENA community leaders

Today, Facebook in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) announced the launch of the Facebook Community Leadership programme, a global initiative to support, recognize and invest in people building communities both online and offline. As part of the programme, Facebook will invest tens of millions, including up to $10 million in grants that will go directly to people leading communities, with the aim to empower them to continue building meaningful communities through the Facebook family of apps and services.

The leadership programme will include:

• Residency and Fellowship opportunities offering training, support and funding for community leaders from around the world.
  • Up to five leaders will be selected to be community leaders in residence and awarded up to $1,000,000* each to fund their proposals.
  • Up to 100 leaders will also be selected for Facebook’s fellowship program and will receive up to $50,000* each to be used for a specific community initiative.
• Community Leadership Circles bringing local community leaders together to meet up in person to connect, learn, and collaborate. Facebook has piloted three circles in the US in 2017 and will be expanding globally this year.
• Groups for Facebook Power Admins, which Facebook currently runs with more than 10,000 group admins in the US and UK, are expanding to more members to help them share advice with one another and connect with our team to test new features and share feedback.

Applications are now open for the residency and fellowship. To learn more and apply, visit communities.fb.com.

Facebook also introduced new tools for group admins at the Facebook Communities Summit in London. These new tools include:

• Admin tools: Admins can now find member requests, pending posts, Group Insights, settings, and more — all together in one place. These tools make it easier to manage groups and frees up more time for admins to connect with people.
• Group announcements: Following the demand from group admins to be able to easily share updates, Facebook is introducing group announcements, which let admins post up to 10 announcements that appear at the top of their group page. Admins can set expiration times for each, giving them greater flexibility in communicating important and timely information.
• Group rules: Keeping communities safe is important. Many admins already create and enforce standards within their groups. Facebook has created a dedicated rules section to help them effectively communicate the rules of the group to members.
• Personalization: Each community has its own identity — that’s why Facebook is announcing colors, which let admins add a personalized color that is displayed throughout their group. This redesign also highlights members’ friends who are in the group, helping to strengthen bonds between members.

In addition, Facebook revealed the expansion of their London-based engineering team that builds technology to help keep people safe and secure on Facebook. London is home to Facebook’s largest engineering hub outside of the US, and by the end of 2018, they will double the number of people working in London on these issues. The engineering work on community safety includes the following:

• Detecting and stopping fake accounts: Working to make sure Facebook is a community of people who can connect authentically with real people.
• Protecting people from harm: Reducing things like harassment and scams that can happen in the real world and on Facebook, by building better tools to spot these issues and remove them.
• Improving ways to report content: Making it easier for people to give us feedback about things that shouldn’t be on our platform, which works in conjunction with our automated detection.

The programs and tools Facebook announced today are designed to help the admins who lead these communities to grow and strengthen bonds among members. The leaders are a constant source of inspiration and Facebook looks forward to continuing their efforts to support them.