There are somewhere between eight and ten million of us outside Iran, in every field, in fifty countries. Most of us have no idea what the others are doing. The Tirgan World Tour, and everything that grows out of it, is an attempt to fix that.

Somewhere in Toronto, an Iranian grandmother recites Hafez from memory down the phone to a grandchild who barely speaks Persian anymore, and neither of them mentions that this might be the last thread. Somewhere in New York, an online school is teaching Persian to children. Somewhere in Paris, someone has just published a textbook in English so the language can be picked up without ever setting foot in Iran. Somewhere in London, a PhD student has spent years working out the most effective way to teach Persian to a diaspora child.

None of them have ever heard of each other — even though each of them could have used what the others already know.

That is the actual condition of the diaspora. It isn't a lack of talent. It isn't loss — by most measures, we are doing extraordinarily well. The condition is dispersal without a nervous system: an enormous amount of talent, effort and invention happening at the same time in more than fifty countries, with no way to add up.

That is what Tirgan has spent the last twenty years trying to change, and the Tirgan World Tour is our attempt to build the connective tissue between all of them.

Our solution: bring people together. The same place, the same platform, the same channels — and let them see each other. So far, more than a million people have walked through Tirgan's gates. Now we're taking those gates around the world, and this blog, The Arrow, is part of that.

Every month we'll do a few things that we believe bring us closer together as a community — as an arrow. A Persian word or phrase worth carrying with you. An artist whose face we should all recognise. A piece of our culture and our history.

But we can't do it without you. From now on, we want your help sharing what matters with the diaspora — a rising star, a new innovation, something Iranians everywhere should hear about.

What we have is twenty years of practice at bringing people together, and a conviction that the alternative — everyone working brilliantly and separately — is a waste none of us can afford. Especially now.

Tirgan only becomes a hub if you make it one.