Universal Youth Club for Palestine
Last day of the 2015 World Social Forum ended with a parade through Tunis streets to celebrate Palestine land day. and to show solidarity with Palestinian people. Participants to the event calls it “Land Day rally.” The parade marched through Tunis’ streets to the Palestine embassy .
Universal Youth Club for Palestine (UYC4Pal), Iranian branch, is a social movement comprised mostly of youth found between facebook users.
- Worldwide, there are over 1.39 billion monthly active Facebook users which is a 13 percent increase year over year. (Source: Facebook as of 1/28/15) What this means for you: In case you had any lingering doubts, statistically, Facebook is too big to ignore.
- Taking advantage of this social phenomenon called facebook the founder of UYC4Pal decided to act forming this movement.
UYC4Pal was present at the World Social Forum 2015 celebrated in Tunis from 24-28 March, at Al Manar University Campus where 4398 organizations engaged the participants in its different activities.
Organizations from around the world find this social forum the perfect avenue to bring ideas and discuss solutions for the our world’s problems.
Iran society find itself at the vanguard on the international fight for the liberation of Palestine from the Zionist entity and its youth take active role in this initiative.
The Palestine issue is one of the focal points in the event:
“This situation makes difficult any perspective of fair solution to the Palestinian issue, and gives to Israel all the space to reinforce its hold on the occupied Palestinian territories and its domination in the region.
Beyond the Palestinian issue, it’s the existence of the nation-states themselves that is challenged. Whether it is in Syria or in Libya, there is a major risk to see the definitive explosion of the historical balances that founded those States existence, and to watch the born of autonomous territories on bases of religion or ethnicity, subject to manipulation by the big and regional powers of time.” WSF2015 official page
UYC4Pal was founded last year by a group of Iranian youth that thought on taking advantage of social networks youth participation, said Whaid Mardane in a facebook interview. Knowing that young people spend great part of their life engaged in internet forums and specially social networks like facebook they thought on bringing them together using facebook walls.
Wahid Mardane, one of the representatives of the Iranian branch of UYC4Pal said, that ‘Universal Youth Club for Palestine’ was formed on 2014 with a group of Iranian students found in facebook.
As we speak, this Iranian social network movement has nearly 400 members and the Tunisian group has reached 1000, he said.
Being at the Tunisia World Social Forum was a very great opportunity to meet the youth and invite other groups to participate, hundreds of students signed out for membership for the UYC4Pal at the event.
Palestinian ambassador to Tunisia, Salman Al Harfi greets Reza Barekati, the Iranian representative for Universal Youth Club for Palestine, at Al Manar University during the World Social Forum 2015
Mardane said that facebook is full with youth that supports Palestine so they decided to form UYC4Pal to bring them together and help them organize the strategies to fight for Palestine in the social networks. The UYC4Pal was well received and had resulted very fruitful said Mardane, between the two clubs, more than 1000 participants signed at the event for UYC4Pal membership.
Mardane as one of the members of the Iranian branch of UYC4Pal stated that one of the activities at the event was to enroll new members in the club and participate in the “Land Rally,” an event that follows at the end of the forum. Thousands of Palestinian activists took part on this parade throughout Tunis major streets and finalized at the Palestinian Embassy building.
Some young Palestinian activists from different nationalities decided to make a social network named ” Universal Youth Club for Palestine, this is a social movement that trying to find youth in social networks as facebook to have a unity and awareness regarding Palestine’s plight. Nowadays the youth live in facebook more than in their home and rooms! in this regard we as Iranian branch of this movement were invited and participated in World Social Forum 2015. On the other hand the Tunisian branch of Universal Youth Club for Palestine was formed as to strengthen the Palestinian Youth movement. Our wish is to see other branches of this movement in other countries, the most important of this movement is a total virtual movement and they can form their own clubs if they wish to develop their own activities, but the main emphasis should on absorbing facebook’s youth to use their time on humanity, specially in activities for Palestine in any modern ways they prefer. Whaid Mardane, Iranian activist and representative of UYP4Pal, Iranian branch.
“The International Council’s decision to organize the WSF 2015, again in Tunis (Tunisia) was decided in Casablanca (Morocco), last November. It responds to a wish formulated by regional and international social movements, after evaluating the social impact of the WSF 2013 in Tunisia, they estimated that it was still necessary to; consolidate the dynamics of changes born thanks to the Tunisian revolution and to the democratic movements in the region.
- To deepen the debates held about the liberal model crisis and about the civilization crisis, and to expand the debates about new geopolitical issues, and to promote new alternatives which respect the people rights, and which are based on peace and social justice.” Official World Social Forum webpage.
Human rights groups , non-profit organizations, cultural institutions and a variety of grassroots organizations gather every year at the World Social Forum to present their ideas and discus alternative solutions for the present world problems, “Many organizations, networks and movements participates at the WSF 2015, to make another world possible,” states WSF official website.
Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, and Reza Barekati Iranian-representative of Universal Youth Club for Palestine. Al Manar University during the 2015 World Social Forum. photo/Ali Bagheri
The Iranian branch for UYC4Pal encourages the youth to form their own clubs in their nations of origin to strengthen the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, that is growing rapidly and strong every day around the world said Mardane, stating that the Tunisian branch was formed also and it is growing very fast, he said at the moment the Iranian UYC4Pal facebook official forum has almost 2500 members.
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