Between 5 – 9 March we organized the seminar “Youth Alternarration: Combating Radicalization of Young People in Online Spaces” in Kumanovo, as a part of a long term strategic partnership between Center for intercultural dialogue, Peshkar (UK) and Out of the Box International (BE), focusing on online radicalization and working with educators on finding creative approaches in tackling radicalization.
The seminar focused on the handbook developed as part of the project and address its content, understand its applicability and learning about the different concepts presented in the hand book concerning Radicalization and Young People in Online Spaces. The programme was designed to be interactive and to create a space for reflection, critical thinking and space for active participation of participants with an aim to give them an opportunity to better understand the different terms and be able to handle the content presented in the handbook.
Following the introduction and exploration of the programme the flow of the seminar was designed to go as the chapters are presented in the hand book. The participants coming from UK, Belgium and North Macedonia had a chance to explore some of the activities that are presented in the handbook and give a feedback on their applicability and implementation in their community. For this reason a meeting with the head of the prevention Department as part of the local police unit was organised. As the police prevention unit is one of the initiator and backbone runner of the city council prevention council which is multi-stakeholder counselling body. The participants had also a chance to visit the premises of the prevention unit and meet with some of the officers that are coordinating activities. After the visit to the prevention unit, a visit was organised to the Youth Center MultiKulti, as a support system for young people of a deprived community in Kumanovo.
We can say for sure that the seminar was successful and participants managed to achieve its learning goals and needs as well felt empowered to work on the topic and develop activities with the young people in their community. Their feedback was that they were equipped with new tools and approaches towards dealing with countering and creating alternative narratives for combating radicalization among young people. They found interesting the presented tools and approaches on working with young people and in this regard also fulfilled the objectives of the seminar.
The project is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme by the European Commission.
More photos from the seminar can be found here.
Seminar "Youth Alternarration: Combating Radicalization of Young People in Online Spaces"
