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Seeds of Peace (SOP) is a non-profit, non-political entity that inspires and cultivates new generations of leaders in communities divided by conflict. SOP equips them with the skills and relationships they need to accelerate social, economic and political changes essential for peace.

SOP's leadership development model begins with a camp session in Maine, US, for youth and educators from divided communities. There, free from the pressure and prejudice of their own communities, participants meet each other face-to-face. During dialogue sessions guided by facilitators, participants confront each others competing narratives, share personal experiences of conflict and tackle topics that fuel oppression, hatred and violence in and between their separate communities. As participants form relationships and gain insights into the root issues that divide them, they build trust, respect and empathy, aimed to inspire them to work for change at home. After graduating from the SOP Camp, its alumni is supported to become youth leaders creating change in their own communities.

Maayan Poleg first joined SOP as a participant in 2000, at the age of 14. Since then, she has remained an active member, participating in SOP events in Israel and around the world. In her role as a facilitator at the Camp, Maayan learned how much she loves working with youth in a non-traditional educational approach. She holds a BA in Psycho-Biology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MA in Organisational Development from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Prior to joining SOP, Maayan worked as an organisational consultant, however as SOP has become an inseparable part of Maayan's life, she decided to rejoin the as Programs Director, working alongside Mohammed.

Mohammed NasserEddin first participated in SOP in the summer of 2002. Having participated in many regional programs, Mohammed joined SOP as Programs Director. After earning a bachelor's degree at the University of Jordan, he worked for the American Chamber of Commerce in Jordan. He returned home to Palestine to work with the Norwegian Refugee Council Jerusalem, an organisation that provides legal assistance for Palestinians. Mohammed is currently pursuing a Master's degree in the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (IDC) in Diplomacy and Conflict studies. Mohammed is a partner with the Oxfam International Youth Program, and has worked with other Action Partners around the world on expanding online workshops for Palestinians in areas of technology and freedom of movement.

Visualizing Impact (VI) uses data, tech and design to communicate about social issues. The team works remotely from Beirut, Amman, Ramallah, Dubai and Toronto. Joumana al Jabri and Ramzi Jaber cofounded VI in 2011 in the wake of their collaboration on TEDxRamallah. VI's first initiative, Visualizing Palestine, is still its central focus and includes multiple sub-projects in partnership with human rights organisations, community organisers and cultural institutions. The team also works on digital rights and freedom of expression, recently launching Onlinecensorship.org. VI projects have received awards from Information is Beautiful, Deutsche Welle's "Best of Blogs", Prix Ars Electronica, the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab World and the Knight News Challenge.

Jessica Anderson grew up in Ohio and recently moved to Toronto, Canada from Beirut, Lebanon with her cat, Selma. She joined VI as an intern in 2013, working on fundraising and impact strategy, before moving into operations and project management. She currently leads VI's digital rights portfolio, which includes collaborations with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Global Voices. Prior to joining VI, Jessica focused on refugee rights advocacy and she holds an M.Sc. in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. Together with VI cofounder Joumana al Jabri, Jessica recently co-authored a chapter in the book Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation: International Case Studies and Practice, by Ken Banks. Other projects she is involved with include the AMENDS global fellows and FRAME LIFE magazine.

Marcos Lemma is a technology consultant in his native Ethiopia. Besides being the co-founder of iceaddis, Marcos has run a literacy research program with MIT & Tuft University, worked on One Laptop Per Child and he is the main planner of Barcamp Ethiopia, the largest single tech event in Ethiopia. Marcos is also an activist on human rights, freedom of speech and access to technology. Marcos blogs on different spaces, including GlobalVoices, and performs public speaking. He’s been mentioned by The Economist, BBC, CCTV, Al jazeera, TechCrunch and Wamda.

iceaddis, established in May 2011, was the first innovation hub and co-working space in Ethiopia, and it currently reaches more than 5000 individuals. At iceaddis work is performed on youth-driven private sector initiatives to facilitate constructive interaction between techies, entrepreneurs, investors and people from the creative industries. It is an open community workspace, vector for investors and pre-incubator for young energetic tech entrepreneurs. Collaborators share ideas, pool resources, use ICTs effectively, access business and life skill trainings and transform ideas into viable businesses that are related to local demands and development. Mainly young university graduates and startup founders use the iceaddis facilities, but educational institutes, government, NGOs and regional companies also get involved in iceaddis' creative community to generate new ideas for their service or develop and test projects.

Judith is an East African Acumen Fellow and an International Focus Fellow. She’s twice been listed as one of the Top 40 Under 40 Women by Kenya’s Business Daily newspaper. CNN named Judith as one of the 10 African tech voices to follow on Twitter. The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology gave her the 2011 Change Agent Award. The US Embassy in Kenya honored Judith with the Unsung Heroes Award and during the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2015 in Nairobi, Kenya, she sat on the same panel as US President Barack Obama and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.

AkiraChix is a non profit organisation that aims to inspire and develop a successful force of women in technology who will change Africa’s future. Founded in April 2010, it’s programs are developed to reach and teach young women at different levels, those in Primary School, High School and University, those working in technology and those who wish to have a career in technology, this also includes hosting their own classes on coding and graphic design.

Frank Kresin is the Research Director at Waag Society. Frank’s background is in artificial intelligence and filmmaking, and his interest is in developing technology for societal goals. He has been involved with many international innovation programmes, amongst them Apps for Europe, City SDK, CineGrid Amsterdam, Making Sense, Code 4 Europe and the Amsterdam Smart Citizens Lab. Frank has spoken, written and lectured on Open Innovation, Open Data & Open Design, Users-as-Designers, Living Labs and Smart Citizens. He is a regular moderator at design and innovation workshops in both Holland and abroad. Frank is the secretary board member at the Dutch chapter of the Internet Society, treasurer at The Mobile City, advisory board member at the Fund for the Creative Industries and member of the Erfgoed & Locatie steering committee.

Waag Society - institute for Arts, Science and Technology - is based in Amsterdam, Holland. Over the past 20 years, the foundation has developed into an institution of international stature, a platform for artistic research and experimentation, and has become both a catalyst for events and a breeding ground for cultural and social innovation. Waag Society develops and researches open, fair and inclusive technology for social innovation, putting people and their needs at the center. It proactively involves artists, scientists and entrepreneurs in early stages to come up with truly useable systems and services. The organisation concerns itself not only with technologies related to the Internet, but also with those related to biotechnology and the cognitive sciences, arguing that these areas have a huge impact on our culture and identity, intuitive and curiosity-driven research by artists and designers is paramount. Artists and designers know better than anyone that they must question technology in order to get to the bottom of things, overthrow sacred cows, stimulate imagination and fantasy, create unexpected connections, and - above all - search for meaning.

Elizabeth is the Co-Founder & CEO of codeX, a veteran journalist and executive producer having made stories, shows, and series on technology and innovation for Bloomberg Television in New York, US. She has also traveled around the African continent telling stories of the entrepreneurs, investors, and companies building Africa’s digital future for Bloomberg TV Africa. Elizabeth currently writes on tech in Africa for Quartz. She also serves on the Executive Committee of Silicon Cape, the umbrella tech advocacy organization in Cape Town, South Africa. Elizabeth has a deep and longstanding passion for economic development in Africa, and believes people gaining skills and tools to build creative products and companies is the key to the continent’s future.

codeX, based in Cape Town, is training the next generation of coders. codeX argues that software developers with strong product focus and problem solving skills are what Africa needs as its billion people go online. codeX finds raw talent and trains them by doing real projects in a work-like environment, building personal and professional development into the curriculum. codeX then works with employers to place coders in jobs and also hires them to do paid development work and mentor the next generation.

Tiago is a multidisciplinary entrepreneur, researcher and developer of IT services for development. He is the co-founder of UX Information Technologies and Tiago is also a technical consultant for projects from the World Bank, USAID, UNICEF, Microsoft, PwC etc. Tiago were a Country Ambassador for Mozambique at SeedStarsWorld, a Change Maker for the Association of International Schools of Africa at the Global Issues Service Summit in Mozambique, and a tech-trainer for the US State Department's TechCamp in Mozambique.

UX Information Technologies vision is to create social development technologies for growing economies. They have devised a three-step approach to identify for-profit opportunities that live at the intersection of highest social gain, financial benefit and long-term sustainability. UX won the first contest for "best new idea in ICT" sponsored by the Mozambique Ministry of Science and Technology, they’ve won a United States African Development Fund grant as part of the Young African Leaders Initiative and won both the Social Enterprise Alliance and the SF Elevator Pitch competitions in San Francisco, US, and finally UX won a grant from the Global Innovation Competition organised by Making All Voices Count.

Esra'a is the founder and director of Majal. She’s a recipient of the Berkman Award from Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and is currently a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow. Previously, Esra’a was an Echoing Green Fellow and a Senior TED Fellow. In 2011 she was featured in Fast Company as one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and awarded the Monaco Media Prize. In 2014, Esra’a was featured in Forbes' "30 Under 30" list of social entrepreneurs making an impact in the world. The same year, Majal received the Human Rights Tulip. In 2015, Esra'a was the recipient of the "Most Courageous Media" Prize from Free Press Unlimited. 

Majal (formerly Mideast Youth) is a network of online platforms that amplify under-reported and marginalised voices throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region). Some of Majal's projects include:- Migrant Rights: the primary resource on the plight of migrant workers in the MENA region;- CrowdVoice: an open source platform that makes sense of the flow of information on social movements across the web by mining relevant content from internet noise;- Mideast Tunes: the largest platform of its kind, featuring 1,200 musicians in the MENA region who use music as a tool for social change;- Ahwaa: a bilingual tool for LGBT youth in the Arab world that creates a safe space for discussion. It is unique in that it uses game mechanics to facilitate and enhance interactions between users.

Founded in 2014, Vongos is the platform for people and organisations who want to make a difference. Volunteers, NGOs, government and companies get connected through an online marketplace which allows them to work together to achieve common social objectives. As one of 11 entities out of 250 applicants, Vongos graduated through the Founder Institute’s incubation programme in Mexico. In 2015 Vongos received an award from Startup Mexico as the best start-up. The same year Vongos was selected to represent Mexico at the huge Slush conference in Finland.Germán Valle is the Co-Founder of Vongos. He went to High School in the United States on a tennis scholarship, before returning to Mexico to get a Bachelor degree in International Business Administration at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City. The Ibero-American University is one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America. Germán worked a few internships during his studies, before starting Vongos.

Ushahidi, which translates to “testimony” in Swahili, was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya during the post-election violence in 2008. Kenyans spoke out on social media and by using their phones, Ushahidi collected the information and presented it on a map. This enabled the citizens to stay away from violent areas, and the authorities to respond to it. Crowdsourced crisis mapping was born. In 2010 the UN system used it after the earthquake in Haiti. Since then the Ushahidi crowdsourcing tools have been deployed and used to raise citizen voices 100 000 times in more than 150 countries. It has reached more than 20 million people, and the tool has been translated to more than 50 languages. Ushahidi is a technology leader, headquartered in Nairobi, with a global team. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a point of visiting Ushahidi while in Kenya and US President Obama has referenced the organisation’s work.