Mideast Youth For Peace

A Web site run by college students hoping to foster conversation about peace in the Middle East has won a $10,000 Berkman Award for its efforts to celebrate and embrace diversity in one of the most polarized regions of the world.

The 21-year-old director of Mideast Youth (www.mideastyouth.com), Esra’a Al Shafei from Bahrain, received one of four such awards given by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the center’s 10th anniversary celebration held in May.

Launched in May 2006, Mideast Youth, attracts contributors from North Africa and the Middle East, who populate the site by posting to the forum, and contributing podcasts and video clips. The site is predominantly written in English, while some entries appear in Arabic and Farsi.

Among the ongoing site projects: an interfaith blog, mefaith.com, which explores the multiple religions practiced in the Middle East. Free Kareem!, another blog, documents the imprisonment of 23-year-old Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Suleiman, sentenced to four years in an Egyptian jail last year.

In other posts, volunteer contributors from across North Africa and the Middle East sound off on various topics, from the U.S. invasion of Iraq to the status of women in the Islamic world.

All contributors give their time and services free of charge, according to the site, which solicits donations. Mideast Youth also sells T-shirts with slogans such as “No Sunni, No Shi’i, Just Muslim” to help support its efforts.