As we celebrate Soliya’s birthday this year, we sit in awe of the incredible achievements of our participants, facilitators, trainers, and coaches, and feel proud of their resiliency as they grapple with difficult, seemingly impossible conversations.

Through times of joy and unrest, through incidents of terror and revolutions, through natural disasters and public health catastrophes, they have found a space to challenge, enlighten, and bond in unprecedented ways. They show themselves to be excellent citizens of their communities both digital and physical.

I first joined Soliya as a volunteer in 2004, then as staff in 2008, and for these past seven years have had the privilege of serving this brilliant community as Chief Executive Officer. I have watched the organization grow and shrink, pivot and reinvent itself, always to come back stronger. Throughout this time, I have been amazed by:

• A community of educators and indomitable volunteers constantly and consistently delivering the highest quality of experiences. 

• The audacious, diverse, and persistent team I get to work with every day. We are never more than 40 individuals and always a collection of extraordinary humans across 8-10 countries and 15-20 nationalities. I am constantly humbled by their passion and determination. 

• The crystal clear need for facilitated online conversations across sectors, geographies, and demographics. There is no issue or situation that does not benefit from intentional discourse, deep listening, and ultimately effective collaboration. 

20 years ago, the use of technology to ‘connect’ was nascent: we had a lot to prove. We chose to commit to measurement through partnerships with social scientists to ensure we weren’t simply purporting but indeed achieving our learning objectives. Back then, we were reaching 100 young people a year. In 2021, we reached 10,000.

Today, Soliya reminds us of the transformative power of authentic human connections - meaningful exchanges that are facilitated, and where participants are emboldened to learn and listen to understand. ‘Social media’ as we know it has been spectacularly poor at flourishing diverse and effective conversations. Algorithms may be good at a lot of things, but generating meaningful social relations is not one of them. If we are to scale human connections online, we must keep humans at the core.

That’s what we have set out to do. We’ve grown our reach with human facilitators, while contending with all the perils of scarcity faced by not for profit organizations, and navigating the pandemic and wars. I believe the reason for this growth has been a recognition of the desperate need for people to connect; for people to share their stories; for people to feel heard and understood rather than shut down and canceled.

Here’s where you come in.

If you are receiving this message, it means you are a friend to Soliya: a member of our giant global family, a program alum, a volunteer, an educator/administrator who has been an early adopter of our methodology to enrich their students’ lives, and/or a supporter of our work.

We are so very grateful to each of you, for without you we would not have the ability to do our work. In order to ensure that we can keep at it, we invite you to:

• Donate $20 to celebrate 20 years 

• Become a monthly donor

• Share about your Soliya experience with 20 folks in your orbit

• Share with us a time when you applied your Soliya experience 

• Make a birthday wish for us! Share your wish by tagging Soliya on social media!

I have a birthday wish too: my wish is for Soliya to touch every emerging leader across the globe with a transformative experience that unlocks their curiosity and humanity.

Happy Birthday Soliya! Here is to the next 20 years and beyond.

With gratitude,

Waidehi Gokhale

Chief Executive Officer

Learn about other Ways to Give.

Soliya is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization with EIN 32-0060209. Donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by USA law. Please consult your tax advisor.

Gift Acceptance Policy

Soliya accepts individual and institutional gifts that support core programs and general operations. In the course of standard fundraising activities, Soliya will accept cash and non-cash contributions, the acceptance of which does not equate with endorsement of, agreement with, or alignment with the contributor. Soliya never takes public positions in exchange for contributions.