File this under “odd philanthropic stories”: a street name in a West Bank refugee camp is both a Twitter feed and a charity case.
According to Ma’an News Agency, the “main source of independent news from Palestine,” here’s the low-down: A Dutch Web site called Jouw Eigen Straatnam charges $146 for people to name the streets in Nablus’s Askar Refugee Camp. They donate the proceeds to Palestinian Child Care Society, which invests in after-school activities for the youth among the 16,000 Palestinians who call this camp home.
Dutch-Palestinian Arjan El Fassed purchased the right to name one of the streets “@arjanelfassed tweetstreet,” a reference to his account on Twitter. Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired.com’s Epicenter blog is inclined to agree with El Fassed’s claim that this is the first street ever named after a Twitter account.
El Fassed sees this as a way to bring the connectivity and creativity of social media into the corporeal world. “Since a refugee camp by definition should not remain permanent, selling street names of the camp is a creative way to connect people and support these children after school,” Wired quotes El Fassed. “Naming the street to my Twitter account is a symbolic way to connect both online and offline with the children of Askar.”
All I can say is it certainly is a #brave #new #world.
Photo courtesy of on twitpic
