Alignment with DF goals (BGI, Platform growth, community)

**EchoLens** is an AI-powered storytelling platform designed to foster empathy, justice, and peacebuilding. In divided societies, emotional disconnection fuels conflict. EchoLens offers a digital sanctuary where users anonymously share real stories—via text, voice, or video—about conflict, injustice, or reconciliation. AI removes identity markers like race or religion and reframes the story through shared emotional themes—grief, love, trauma, and hope. The listener experiences the story through emotion first, then sees the storyteller’s identity, creating a moment of rehumanization. Key features include emotion-based story matching, identity masking and reveal, multilingual and culturally adaptive AI, and open-source modular design. Piloting in Nigerian schools, NYSC camps, and peace hubs, EchoLens aims to scale globally across education, DEI programs, media, justice systems, and trauma healing. It’s a movement for radical listening—one story at a time.

Problem description

In societies with deep ethnic, religious, and regional divides, emotional disconnection fuels misunderstanding and conflict. Misinformation and stereotypes keep groups isolated, while social media reinforces these divides. People rarely encounter the lived experiences of "the other," perpetuating bias. EchoLens bridges this gap by promoting empathy through emotional storytelling, masking identities, and revealing them only after listeners connect, fostering understanding and reconciliation.

Proposed Solutions

EchoLens is an AI-powered storytelling platform that promotes empathy and reconciliation. Users share anonymous stories of conflict or healing, while AI removes identity markers like race or religion. The focus is on shared emotions—grief, love, trauma—before revealing identities. This emotion-first approach helps break stereotypes, fosters deeper connections, and promotes understanding, creating a scalable tool for peacebuilding, cross-cultural dialogue, and overcoming biases.