The EUROGUIDE Project

During their adolescence years, young people are in the process of learning, developing opinions and exploring different worldviews. Education is essential to preventing young people from being attracted to violent extremist ideologies, organisations and movements - whether extreme Islamist, far-right, far-left or other threats to cohesive, inclusive societies. It is therefore vital to help and support front-line practitioners (teachers, social workers, etc.) to empower them to better address the vulnerabilities of young people to extremism. This will consequently contribute to the prevention and countering of youth radicalisation and extremism.  

 

Front-line practitioners at the local level can help to prevent radicalisation by tackling the polarising issues that can lead to young people feeling excluded and thus more vulnerable to extremist ideologies. One of the main challenges to creating resources to support teachers, social workers, etc. is that the issues causing polarisation will vary significantly between EU member states and between the different types of extremism to which young people can be subjected to. Our proposal is a living platform delivering e-learning materials that empower front-line practitioners to teach young people to identify and adopt the democratic values that are shared by EU citizens, which will therefore be of universal value. The platform content will be developed through interviews/workshops with front-line practitioners (in Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands). This, so that we can define the shared values and methods for integrating these into the everyday support and interactions that responders have with young people - ultimately creating a handbook for each participating country. The online toolkit will also include pragmatic support for practitioners facing specific challenges and an online quiz that will help young people become better critical thinkers. The online training will help front-line practitioners utilise the resources effectively. As a result, practitioners will integrate the teaching of shared values into the support they give to young people, access pragmatic solutions to specific challenges to integration and use resources that will help youth gain the media literacy that supports resilience to extremism.

 

Short-term beneficiaries (front-line practitioners) will become more confident and capable in their ability to help and support their youth, preventing youth radicalisation and extremism; medium-term beneficiaries (young people supported by the front-line practitioners) will gain resilience and a more robust understanding of the values that drive positive life choices; and the project as a whole will impact on its long-term beneficiaries (EU citizens) by helping to create safer and more cohesive local communities.