Topics: Preventing radicalisation; Digital youth work; European identity and values
Action Type: Cooperation partnerships in youth
Countries Covered: 
Germany 
Croatia 
Serbia 
Belgium 
Greece 
Italy
The online radicalisation and violent extremism are issues that communities are exposed to for more years now, especially after the terrorist attacks in different cities in Europe and wars in the world have occurred. For years, the fear that young people can be a targeted group by violent extremist has been in the attention of governmental institutions, families, working places as well as community. This fear comes even more today where this kind of content is presented, almost without control or moderation, in the digital world. Young people are the most present community in the online world, through accessing of different social media, platforms, and so on. This makes them as one of the most vulnerable community to this phenomenon.
During Covid-19 the online content was even more embraced by young people and therefore the potential to being exposed to online radicalisation has increased.
There is a need for youth workers and educators to address this issue and at the same time to find an innovative response to support youth workers with new approaches, materials, digital tools that contribute to better impact on solving this issue.
The project is directly developing their knowledge and capacity, by providing youth workers, youth professionals and youth organisations with the relevant data, tools and training their digital competences, thus increases the level of quality of youth work, and its capacity to address urgent and emerging matters. These digital competences are, for most of the youth workers, not acquired during their formal education and so are largely overlooked.
In the field of youth work an ideal society could be described as a fully inclusive community of active citizens. This concept of inclusive community of active citizens has changed in recent years, and especially in the recent Covid-19 pandemic times, due to the reality of today society in which technology is taking more and more importance and thus having impact in each field of our life.
Not only that the young people are nowadays increasingly engaging with new technologies and digital media instead of joining face-to-face activities of youth centres/clubs, but also this period of 2 years of Covid-19 pandemic measures and limitations to travelling and organising face-to-face residential mobility activities for youngsters – have resulted in the lack/decrease of interaction of youngsters with their peers from other countries and communities, which further increased the potential impact of negative influence of (online) radicalisation among/towards youngsters.
For the last 2 years, youth workers and youth organisations have decreased the number of their face-to-face European youth work activities, which resulted in the decrease of number of youngsters benefitting from such activities that inspire intercultural learning/dialogue, acceptance of others and European citizenship.
In addition to that, current war in Ukraine further influences youngsters in a negative way.
We believe that youngsters who have been through more youth work activities that promote European citizenship and values, are more resilient towards the potential negative impacts of both pandemic isolation measures and war related hatred and radicalisation spread online and offline.
As we have noticed a decline in the number of beneficiaries, youngsters having opportunities for quality interaction with peers from other countries/communities, and an increase in the negative influence of online radicalisation on them in our communities and among our youth (work) organisations, we have gathered and are motivated to do this project that will assist us in addressing this situation.
Aim of the project:
- Developing and strengthening capacities of youth workers and youngsters in preventing and combating radicalisation through development of educational methodologies and tools that support online and offline anti-radicalisation youth work.
Project Specific objectives:
- Raising awareness on negative impacts of radicalisation and educating young people (mainstream and marginalised) on anti-radicalisation through the development of inspiring handbook, toolkit, as well as the e-learning platform.
- Empowering youth workers and improving knowledge management of our organisations in theory and practice for building competences of youth workers in prevention and combating radicalisation through the development of innovative curriculum and the e-learning course.
- Exchange good practices and further develop effective partnership among partners from 6 European countries (and beyond) with different realities regarding education, awareness and practices on anti-radicalisation and its prevention among the community.
Project partners:
- Outreach Hannover e.V., Germany
- Association for improvement of modern living skills “Realization”, Croatia
- Active youth in happy Europe (AMUSE), Serbia
- Out of the Box International, Belgium
- Koinoniki sinetairistiki epixeirisi sillogikis & koinonikis ofeleias (Sustain events), Greece
- LINK DMT S.R.L., Italy
- Learning Wizard d.o.o., Croatia
*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.