UN-Habitat this month gave a plenary presentation at the Social Media Strategies Summit in London to explain how new social media and communications systems can be used to help combat urban poverty and housing problems around the world.
Mr. Mohamed El Sioufi, UN-Habitat's Global Housing Strategy Coordinator, told delegates that there are more than 120 million vacant homes in a world where 500 million people are not properly housed, and 863 million people currently living in slums.
He said that to address the daunting housing and slum problems, better global and local partnerships were needed, along with new, rapid methods of communication. UN-Habitat will now exploit the ever growing outreaching capacity of the social media to complement internet web-sites, e-mail, and e-conferencing systems as well the classic physical meeting, workshops and seminars.
Ms. Lee-Anne Ragan, President of Rock.Paper.Scissors Inc., and a consultant to the United Nations, presented five priorities essential to the success of a social media strategy.
