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The following is part of our series on different ways Facebook is used across the world. You can read previous posts in this series here. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please submit it here.


Newly married Pellegrino Polo was in his mid-20s when his father decided to move their family from Italy to Netcong, N.J., in search of new opportunities. Eventually, his family saved enough money to start their own Italian restaurant, named after Pellegrino's father, Stefano. Pellegrino later decided to close the original restaurant in order to open a new one in a better location, and for the past 19 years he's been successfully running Rose's Place, named after his mother.

Pellegrino gets up at 4:30 every morning to open up the restaurant, where he works 7 days a week, 363 days a year. "Only on Christmas and Easter does he close the restaurant," said his son, Stefano. Despite his busy schedule, Pellegrino, now 56, has not forgotten the people he left behind in Italy.

During his limited free time every evening, Pellegrino loves using Facebook to stay in touch with relatives, many of whom he has reconnected with after several decades apart. Every night he habitually checks the profiles of his Italian family and friends to see if they've updated their statuses, posted new notes, or shared links to interesting articles they've found on the Internet.

When you need help using Facebook, we want it to be as easy as a click for you to get it. Our Help Center offers a central resource for you to find answers to common questions and learn more about using Facebook.

Recently, we introduced a more streamlined design and a series of other changes for the Help Center to make it faster for you to find the answers you need. The improvements include:

• A new search interface that displays related help pages and matches help content for other languages if there are no results in your language, in addition to the regular FAQ results and user-to-user help topics.


• Filters on the left-hand side to navigate the available content types: FAQs, user-to-user support, and the new privacy and safety pages.


• Separate user-to-user support navigation, for both those who simply want answers from other users, as well as those who want to answer other people's questions.


• Unique Web addresses, or URLs, for each FAQ so you can share them with friends and family who are looking for help.

The following is part of our series on different ways Facebook is used across the world. This week, we are featuring stories about how people are connecting for the holidays. You can read previous posts in this series here. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please submit it here.


In December, when signs of Christmas become apparent everywhere in the U.S., it can be easy to forget about the numerous winter holidays that take place around the world. Amy Bridges, a teacher at an inner-city school in Indianapolis, wanted to change that for her 7th and 8th grade students. Most had never left the city, let alone the state or country.

Amy wanted to share global traditions with a more personal lesson than could be taught from the generic information in a teaching manual. She hoped to illustrate their importance using real-life stories from a variety of people who had direct experience with winter holidays.

Amy reached out last year to friends and family through Facebook with a simple request. Explaining that she was trying to broaden her students' international horizons, she asked her friends to contribute stories about their experiences with winter celebrations and holidays from other cultures and countries. Their descriptions, she explained, would "provide wonderful, authentic discussion points for 12-to-15-year-old students." In no time, Amy had received several responses, giving her enough material to shape a lesson around their firsthand accounts.

Thanks to her Facebook friends, Amy's class talked about various Jewish Hanukkah traditions, the Muslim celebration of Eid, and the evolution of the Yule holiday. They also learned about celebrations connected to the winter solstice, such as the tradition of Yalda that occurs in Iran, and numerous Japanese winter practices.

Finally, Amy's students were curious to hear about the different ways Christmas was celebrated around the world, with one Facebook friend contributing stories of a snowless "summer Christmas" from New Zealand in the Southern Hemisphere.

According to Amy, it's hard to tell whether she or her students enjoyed the lesson more. Although the kids were intrigued by the celebrations they discussed, Amy was inspired by the support she had received from her friends on Facebook.

"As 'authenticity' becomes an education buzzword," she said, "Facebook is one place to easily gather information, anecdotes, and documented facts from 'experts'—if you're lucky enough to know them."


Sara, an intern on Facebook's communications team, has finished decorating her tree and is learning how to play dreidel.