Welcome new volunteers and Farvardingan Statement

[Amir Fassihi]

Salam Doostan,

I'd like to welcome Mohammad Navab and Bahman Abbassian to our volunteer list.

Bahman is an expert in web development and a wonderful human being.  In the long run, he can give us much advice on how to strategize our growth on Facebook and the internet and how to improve our website.

Mohammad is an old friend and mentor which I believe most of you already know.  He is full of positive energy and with lots of contact among Iranian Americans.  He will also be very valuable if in the future we would like to do any programs at UCLA.

I'd like to encourage us to continue with writing the statements.  I know all the burden is on Partow's shoulder but I believe this is the most important task we can do at this time.  Our goal is farhangsazi and these statements are the first step in doing that.  Eventually, we can move on and make 30-60 second TV spots on each celebration, but we will need the research done in each statement in order to do that.  

I know we missed statements for Nowruz and Sizdeh-bedar, but that is ok.  we can always write those next year:)  In fact, I encourage us to focus more on celebrations which people don't know about than those which everybody already participates in.  The next celebration which we will have time to prepare a statement is Farvardingan.  I like to suggest we continue our work and work on Farvardingan if its ok with Partow.

Regarding Chahar-shanbeh souri:

I put two photos with the statement on our Facebook  page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nowruz-Foundation-for-Nonviolence-and-Democracy/176998468977519) and paid $10 for promotion of each.  They were different photos of chahrshanbeh-souri but with the same exact statement.  One was seen 2575 times with 26 likes and 4 shares. The other was seen 3508 times with 21 likes and 16 shares.  The shares were less than the statement on Esfandgan (60) , but I think that is because women's issues have more interest for sharing.

On Balatarin, we had 22 points (compared to 11 points on Esfandgan)

Our total likes on our Facebook page is 633.

In time, as we increase the likes on our Facebook, our statements and later, videos will reach thousands.  Once we do some fund raising, $100 promotion for a statement can help reach tens of thousands of people on Facebook.

Amir