A sense of responsibility towards society is one of the most important pillars on which the various social media platforms ongoing work must be based. Hence, a few days ago, Facebook announced on its official blog that they are opening applications for the Facebook Communities Summit, which is happening February 7 – 8 at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. In this official announcement, Facebook invites leaders of local business and nonprofit communities to the event, in addition to people leading communities on Facebook Groups, Pages and Fundraisers. It calls People from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and the US to apply at facebookcommunitiessummit.com.

As explained by Facebook:

“There are millions of communities on Facebook representing thousands of interests. They all have one thing in common: a leader who brings people together.”

This Facebook summit is considered to be a great event, where attendees will learn from each other and hear announcements from Facebook about the latest tools and programs, that are built by Facebook to support them. Additionally, Facebook Next Communities Summit in California will bring a great set of workshops and small group sessions that will offer new skills to help leaders define and fulfill the purpose and vision of their communities. On the same front, Facebook confirmed that its Communities Summit is gathering thousands of community leaders from around the world, establishing valuable connections with each other that can lead to innovative ideas, partnerships and more. Janet Sanchez, group admin and founder of Esposas(os) Militares Hispanas(os) US Armed Forces, is considered to be one of those people.

As said by Janet Sanchez:

“I started the group with 10 members to help spouses with language barriers be included in the military community,” Janet says. Since participating in the event last year, “the group has evolved in all aspects. We provide the guidance, support, advice, friendship, employment readiness, financial readiness, acknowledgement of benefits and military customs to spouses all over the world. We’re now offering a scholarship for spouses and children in our group — something we decided at the Facebook Communities Summit.”

On the other hand, we should point out that the Facebook Communities Summit in California is not Facebook’s only effort regarding the matter; it’s considered to be a part of its ongoing work to support community leaders and the communities they’ve built.  on February 9^th, 2018, Facebook announced at the Facebook Communities Summit in Europe the launch of “the Community Leadership Program“, which is a global initiative that invests in people building communities. Additionally, Facebook pointed out that they will commit tens of millions of dollars to the program, including up to $10 million in grants that will go directly to people creating and leading communities. In the same conference, Facebook also announced the launch of new tools for group admins and the expansion of their London-based engineering team that builds technology to help keep people safe on Facebook. In August, Facebook announced making two new partnerships with two big training organizations in the USA -including the Columbus State Community College and the National Urban League- in order to introduce training for 1 million people and small business owners in digital skills across the US by 2020, so Facebook is creating more in-person training programs, offering online classes, and partnering with local and national organizations who will help teach digital skills in their communities.

Then, in September, Facebook officially announced its Community Leadership Program Participants and confirmed that they selected five participants as community leaders in residence to be awarded up to $1,000,000 to fund their community initiative.

Finally, it should be mentioned that the Facebook Community Leadership Program is built to empower community leaders who are building communities around the world, as a response to community leaders’ needs for additional support, better tools, and access to funding. Accordingly, this week, Facebook announced on its official blog the 115 people who have been selected into the Facebook Community Leadership Program as community leaders in residence, fellows and youth participants. It should be pointed out that since Facebook announced the program, they received more than 6,000 applications from all over the world.