Soliya is an entrepreneurial non-profit organization with offices in New York and Cairo dedicated to improving relations between Western & predominantly Muslim societies by combining best practices from conflict resolution and cross-cultural education with innovative application of new communication and media technologies.
Since its founding in 2002, Soliya has developed a groundbreaking online cross-cultural education program, the Connect Program, that has been integrated into curriculum at over 80 universities in 25 countries across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Europe & North America. In 2009, Soliya launched a new initiative called The Network, where young adults use the latest in media and communication technologies to expose people in the general public to alternative perspectives and enable them to interact in a constructive, respectful way about the issues currently dividing Western & predominantly Muslim societies. Thousands of young adults from extraordinarily diverse backgrounds have engaged in intensive facilitated dialogue and/or received extensive online training in facilitation or media production through Soliya’s programs resulting in a vibrant and active global volunteer community.
Exchange 2.0 is the primary way we are doing that, based on the belief that, in the 21st Century, it should become the norm for students to have a profound cross-cultural experience as part of their education, whether it is in person or online. We have established an Exchange 2.0 Coalition with key partners to collaboratively make that vision a reality.
The Connect Program is our flagship program that demonstrates the potential of Exchange 2.0. It is an online cross-cultural education program that has been implemented in over 100 universities in 27 countries across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Europe and North America since 2003.
To provide ongoing engagement opportunities to alumni from these programs and to ensure we have dependable pool of high-quality facilitators for them, we also offer Advanced Training programs.
Finally, Civil Media, is the term we use to describe a new strategic model we are developing, which empowers the emerging community of young adults from our programs to amplify voices from civil society that are not commonly heard and catalyze constructive and respectful discourse across divisions about important socio-political issues.
[adapted from the Soliya website]
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 