Facebook Helps Promote Social Solidarity

SMN No. 5, July 8, 2010

Unlike most Syrian Facebook groups that usually criticise social and political conditions or pledge their support to a personality or a phenomenon, “Soul” is blazing a trail as a practical group that creates useful contacts between people. The group was created late last year by youth from the north-eastern city of Aleppo and now numbers more than two thousand members.

The group seeks to offer an opportunity for people with all sorts of medical problems to find volunteers willing to help them. The beneficiaries of the group are described as patients who need surgical operations, medicine, shelter or simply psychological support. By posting medical reports and photos, it documents difficult medical cases where patients cannot afford to pay for their treatment and sends out appeals for people to help.

The group then keeps tracks of cases after they receive assistance. Some of the patients who’ve benefited from the group include an elderly person who was offered a wheelchair, a teenage girl from a needy family who managed to have an eye operation and a newborn from a poor family who needed heart surgery.

The group also has a page on WordPress.com where the patients it helped are archived.