Leave it to an Echoing Green Fellow to apply cutting-edge social media technology to the intractable cultural divide between the west and the Arab & Muslim world.  Soliya, the brainchild of 2004 Echoing Green Fellows Lucas Welch and Liza Chambers, provides video conferencing and training tools to facilitate dialogue between university students. Their powerful project was profiled in the lead story of CNN's Inside the Middle East last week.

Lucas recently reports:

"This semester approximately 250 students from 20 universities across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe & the US have been participating in Soliya’s Connect Program, the vast majority as part of an accredited course at their university.  Participating students engage in intensive dialogue sessions in small groups using Soliya’s own web-based videoconferencing and collaboration application.  With the help of highly trained facilitators from around the world, they talk about the divisive issues like the War in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, but they also talk about the more personal aspects of what makes us all human beings like what they did last weekend and what makes them laugh."