The unexpected dimension of the refugee crisis has hit Europe unprepared, and it challenges, apart from logistical problems, also the large number of professionals and volunteers who work with receiving, helping, teaching and integrating refugees. This huge task requires not only additional budgets for registration, accommodation, food, medical care etc., but also a large work force of “front liners”. Within the public administration, new staff is recruited or transferred to this area from other work. In addition, hundreds of NGO’s and thousands of volunteers are dedicating their time to help and to teach these immigrants European values and, most of all, the language of the host country.The “welcome culture” that existed in autumn 2015 in some EU member states (especially Germany, Austria and Sweden) has faded away and new restrictions make life more difficult not only for arriving refugees, but also for those who have found shelter in the past months and years. After their first relief to have escaped from terror and war, they will start to feel frustrated and pessimistic about their future. Confronted with the rising xenophobia of the “autochthone” population, they might develop a feeling of inferiority which can lead, as the New Years’ events in Cologne showed, to sudden outbreaks of violence, to inclination towards radical ideologies, thus fuelling the spiral of mutual distrust.People working with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants suddenly find themselves between two frontiers: growing xenophobia on one side, and rising frustration and impatience of their clients on the other side. The large part of these front liners has just their good will to help. But sometimes “well meant is the contrary to good”. The Radicalisation Awareness Network of the European Commission states that „...the people best placed to tackle the phenomenon of radicalisation are people in direct contact with targeted individuals or vulnerable groups of population.“Front liners, teachers and trainers need therefore new skills and competences to be better prepared to deal with tensions in and between diverse groups of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. They should know how to detect, at an early stage, indicators of radicalisation among their clients. However, many of them have had their vocational education years ago, and many are completely or partially unprepared to the changes in the way in which our society is organized and which conceptual aspects of radicalisation pose a threat.Therefore, the overall objective is to equip public people working with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants with skills and competences• to deal with (intercultural) tensions between diverse groups of their clients• to detect indicators among their clients/learners who are at at risk of extremism, including the risk of being drawn into terrorism, either directly or through the radicalisation of family dependents• to identify which is the best way to build resilience to radicalisation• to recognise and respond to increased concerns about extremism and discrimination, e.g. racism, islamophobia, anti-Semitism which refugees and many settled migrants face• to reduce racism and xenophobia in the society.In order to reach these objectives, the specific objectives are• to implement an e-platform with all initiatives and learning materials identified and collected in the project, especially how to handle conflicts and intercultural tensions, and materials for the daily practice where frictions appear and clients/learners develop feelings of inferiority or frustration that might render them vulnerable to being drawn into radicalisation• to summarize the findings in a “White Paper Report: Prevent Radicalisation” that will give an overview about the current situation of the specific project environment in the partners’ countries, present the initiatives, projects and materials for conflict solving strategies, which build clients’/learners’resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental European values and enabling them to challenge extremist views• to implement also an online interactive forum, in order to facilitate the exchange between educators and youth workers who are confronted with this phenomenon and who will be able to obtain peer support and helpful advice. The project fits into the common underlying strategy of the partners insofar as the development of guidelines and Prevent Radicalisation Resource Pack is in line with their research or educational activities and their operative programmes. The transnational cooperation of partners, the majority of them from countries that have been greatly involved in the recent refugees’ track, will enrich the quality of the results and will render them immediately applicable for support their clients before their vulnerabilities are exploited by those that would want them to embrace terrorism.
The project "Prevent Radicalisation - Supports for Professionals in Their Work with Refugees and Migrants" was developed by the following partners: Università delle LiberEtà del FVG (Italy, Coordinator), E-C-C Verein fuer interdisziplinaere Bildung und Beratung (Austria), INTEGRA INSTITUT (Slovenia), QUALED (Slovakia), KTP (Czech Republic), Kultur und Arbeit e.V. (Germany). It took place over 18 months between September 2016 and February 2018. The context of the project is the refugee crisis that has hit Europe in recent years: the unexpected dimension of the crisis has found many countries unprepared and has posed a serious challenge to a large number of professionals and volunteers working to receive, help, provide training and integrate refugees. People working closely with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants suddenly find themselves between two fires: the growing xenophobia of the indigenous population on the one hand and frustration and impatience on the other. Most of these people are motivated by a great will to help, but sometimes the best intentions do not necessarily lead to doing any good. New skills and competences are needed to be better prepared to deal with tensions within and between different groups of refugees, and indicators of radicalisation that may exist need to be identified at an early stage. The overall objective of the project was to identify initiatives, projects and approaches that show how to provide skills and competences to people working with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in order to address (intercultural) tensions between different groups, to detect, among beneficiaries/dispersers at risk of extremism, indicators to identify how best to build resilience to radicalisation, recognise and address the growing concerns about extremism and discrimination, such as racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, which refugees and many migrants face, and reduce racism and xenophobia in society. To achieve this goal, more than 60 Best Practices identified in each of the project partner countries have been collected and a report (the White Paper) has been drawn, which also contains the conclusions that each partner has drawn from the analysis of the Best Practices themselves. A document not foreseen during the project construction phase, the "Cross-sectorial analysis report", was also drawn up: it contains a more detailed analysis of the Best Practices according to some indicators such as the reference targets, the type, the experience and the areas of interest and it also includes an analysis of the number of good practices per country compared to the partnership average. During the research phase, the bodies identified during the implementation phase of the project idea were contacted in order to obtain an initial feedback on the current state of the issues related to the relationship between professionals or volunteers and migrants. The same bodies, as well as other stakeholders belonging to the national and European networks of each project partner, were then involved in the dissemination of the project results by sending newsletters, dissemination meetings and press releases. These bodies include secondary and vocational training schools, municipalities, social promotion associations and other institutions or associations dealing with the reception or integration of migrants. The main activities and results of the project were therefore the research phase in each country of the partnership, which also involved the bodies identified during the implementation of the project idea, the identification of the Best Practices, the creation of a single model to bring together the indicators and contents of each Best Practice, the creation of the White Paper which contains short summaries and cross-references to the Best Practices and conclusions for each partner country, the creation of an appendix, the "Cross-sectorial analysis report", the translation of the Best Practices and the White Paper into each language of the partnership countries and the creation of a website to collect all the information about the project and its results. In addition, the project created internal documents such as the Project Management Toolkit, the Memorandum of Understanding and Code of Conduct, the Quality Assurance & Evaluation Plan, the Dissemination Logs for each partner and the project logo. All the project meetings scheduled were regularly held in Slovenia, Austria and Italy. The impact obtained during the dissemination of the project is being evaluated. The project valorisation activities included the sending of newsletters and the presentation of the project results to the entities belonging to the partnership and to the stakeholders identified.