Cross-sectoral seminar "Building young people's resilience against violent radicalisation"

Are you concerned with the risk of violent radicalisation and growing extremism of young people you work with? Is your organisation actively involved in building young people's resilience in order to prevent young people's violent radicalisation? Are you seeking for more effective approaches and strategies to respond to this challenge? Then this seminar might be for you. Young people's personal circumstances and the wider political, social and economic environment in which they live may make them vulnerable to various radical influences and also violent radicalisation. Realities of this emerging trend make it necessary to emphasise the need to work with young people in Europe and its neighbouring regions, in order to strengthen their resilience to violent radicalisation, and reinforce the openness and inclusiveness of the communities in which they live. The seminar is part of a strategy on the topic of ‘Youth work against violent radicalisation’, which has been developed by a consortium of several National Agencies for Erasmus+, youth field, four SALTO Resource Centres and the EU-Council of Europe Youth Partnership since 2016. The focus is to strengthen the role of youth work in building young people's resilience in the context of increasing religious and political radicalism in today’s societies in Europe and its neighbouring regions. Building resilience is work that youth workers have always done. Through several proposed activities, we are creating a space for non-formal educators, youth workers and other practitioners to share their practices, methods and thoughts on preventing radicalisation for vulnerable young people and building community resilience. The activities aim to develop specific tools and contributions for facing the current social and political situation and young people’s violent radicalisation that societies are facing. A cross-sectoral approach is important in order to recognise all the actors that are actively involved in the process of building community resilience. This approach offers the possibility to create links with others, to be visible and to be aware of other experiences, potential interdependencies and synergies. Within this context, THIS SEMINAR wants to offer a space for: - Sharing practices of youth workers and all kinds of different actors in building community resilience against the violent radicalisation of young people; - Reflecting about the role of different actors in the prevention of young people’s radicalisation leading to violence; - Analysing the transferability of existing practices and tools to other contexts; - Raising the visibility of the role that non-formal education can play in building community resilience; and - Exploring possible interdependencies between different approaches and how to implement effective strategies. TARGET GROUP: We are looking for practitioners from different professional contexts. Participants should have experience in working in directly with young people on building community resilience and/or working to prevent young people's radicalisation that might lead to violence.