Jeddah Riding the Twestival Wave

By Sherief Ahmed

For the most part, social media has benefited our lifestyles, and continues to do so with initiatives like the Twestival. It’s a simple idea, Twestival uses social media for social good, connecting communities offline to not only raise awareness but raise capital for various causes. Jeddah is on board a global trend. Not only is Saudi Arabia a social media trendsetter in the region, with studies showing a 240% increase of twitter users in Saudi alone, but also realizes the real impact that social media initiatives can have in local communities.

Twestival is a brilliant idea with a focus on raising money for international projects that help under privileged communities. Twestival gathers online tweeters to meet offline for one-day to have fun, and highlight a cause where the ticket sales will be donated to a particular cause. With over 200 cities already participating, from Buenos Aires, Bangalore, Seattle, and now with Jeddah on board, the Twestival has 45 countries and counting!

Twestival is the largest global social media fundraiser to date. So far it has raised $1.2 million for 137 nonprofits. All the events are run by and organized by volunteers. You have tweeters all over the world and what’s great about this is you can setup the meeting in any country. In 2010 the cause was education, in which 72 million children in the world do not get an opportunity to go to school. In March of last year, over 175 cities hosted the event and it raised over $400,000. All funds were delivered to Malawi, Liberia, Haiti and Burundi.

This year on March 24th the Twestival held in Jeddah will be supporting a great organization, The Society of Majid Bin Abdulaziz. This non profit, strategically tackles every day issues that would lead to a high impact results.

The event has a great line-up of speakers, among them, Said Baaghil, a renowned brand strategist. So if you are free Thursday the 24th, look up where everyone will be meeting (http://www.twestival.com/events) and join in for a great cause!

For more information visit: http://jeddah.twestival.com/

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeddahTwestival