Local ‘twestival’ to be held at Bandra

The current wave of popularity that the networking sites are getting is indeed phenomenal. Around the world, Twitter has been used to share academic notes, send out school notices, debate about latest happenings and much more.

Moving a step, the Mumbai Twestival 2009 is being organised by the active Twitter users. They will be supporting Help a Child, as their cause. A Twitter-festival is a global series of events organised by volunteers around the world in a short timeframe, which bring people offline for a cause.

Twestival is run completely by volunteers and insulated from any commercial venture, the organising teams work closely and outline an achievable fundraising target.  Twestival takes place in cities around the world from September 10 - 13 this year. “For our regular tweet ups (meets) we always go in a bunch and hence get discounts at various joints. We wanted to spend this money for a good cause. Basically Twestival will help us spread the word,” said Tarun Chandel, organiser, Twestival.

The Mumbai Twestival 2009 is an awareness and fundraising event for a noble cause. Help a Child is an organisation which will help unprivileged children to break through the cycle of poverty through education. It aims at providing scholarships to intelligent pupils who can't afford the increasing cost of education around.

Andrea McLeod, assistant manager with Help A Child said, “This is a earnest move because the Mumbai twitter community is made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, each with their own interests and reasons for being there.”

Talking about the evolution of social media platforms, Moksh Juneja, a social media catalyst says, “Social media platforms started getting active because people thought that they couldn't remain anonymous, but then there was sudden urge of meetings offline with all those people whom they were interacting with. Purposeful events started getting conceptualised.”

Andrea added, “We have recently got some sponsorship from people who heard about us in connection with Twestival. We have even had donations and support offered from Twitter users in Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata which shows exactly how far the service can reach.”