Context Background: Cases of violence, suicide bombers, blasts in capital cities and planned terror attacks, combined with the worrying number of young people joining extremist groups and enlisting to fight for them abroad, prove that radicalisation and extremism remain a challenge for our societies. Ideologies that motivate extremist groups is diverse and these ideologies include religious inspired extremism, left wing, anarchist and right wing ideologies as well as nationalist and separatist ideologies. All types of extremists have turned out to be more globalized and they make use of opportunities provided by internet. As a result, it is getting difficult to detect the actions of these groups earlier and protect lives of innocent people. Trying to solve this developing global problem with traditional law enforcement techniques is not enough. The requirement of a broader methodology which aims at earlier intervention and prevention is a stubborn fact. Objectives The Paris Declaration of Education Ministers of 17 March 2015 points education as a powerful weapon against extremism. Schools and educators are on the front-line to help, identify and safeguard youngsters at risk of radicalization so SAVE is a prevention-based project. *Teachers will be equipped with the knowledge and the skills to detect the warning signs of extremism and how to respond to them. *Students will be empowered on respect for human dignity, freedom (including freedom of expression), the rule of law and respect for human rights, citizenship, stereotypes, discrimination, extremism, democratic values, cultural diversity, critical thinking and media literacy skills in order to strengthen their resistance to extremism *Multiagency cooperation will be established to strengthen the response. Number and profile of participants There are seven partner organizations from 6 different countries. There is one local educational authority, one university, one NGO, one ICT company and three schools within partnership. Description of activities There will be a Europe Wide baseline assessment to identify levels of awareness and extent of extremism in schools in 12 EU countries. It will be an online questionnaire based survey. After the analysis there will be a teacher training activity for Empowering teachers. Following this training, teachers will prepare lesson plans to include “extremism issues” in curriculum of mainstream schools. After the first plans, to introduce them to wider audience teachers will organize workshops in their schools for teachers in both their schools and neighbor schools. After teacher trainings second part of the project, empowering students against extremism, will start. After this activity "Peace Envoys” from each partner school will be elected by democratic elections. Students will take part in learning activities with students from partner countries.They will learn fundamental values that lie at the heart of the European Union. Students will organize workshops in their countries for other students. Second part of young people's training will focus on strengthening students’ ability to think critically and exercise judgement so that, particularly in the context of the Internet and social media, they are able to grasp realities to distinguish fact from opinion, to recognise propaganda and to resist all forms of radicalization and extremism. In addition to learn how to protect them against to extremist groups. As a part of this training "Peace Envoys" will learn how to create their own “Digital Peace Propaganda” as a counter extremism movement. After this training activity students will organise training actvities for other students in their countries. They will prepare their propagandas and disseminate them via social media and local/national/international channels. Methodology: Plan,do,check,act (PDCA) will be the methodology of the project for the control and continuous improvement. Each activity will be applied by taking account this methodology. Results will be: Project web page, Europe wide baseline assessment, teacher training module, lesson plans and worksheets, two different modules for students, (Young Peace Envoys Training Module, Digital Literacy and Online Propaganda Training Module) Peace Campaign Videos, Long Term Impact: Teachers will get benefit from the developped skills to prevent young people from joining extremist groups. It will be clear for young people that extremist actions have terrible consequences; and, last but not least with the help of SAVE project the influence of those who spread extremist ideological propaganda, hatred speeches and separatist ideologies will minimize. We will be able to bring local stakeholders (through support letters) together to fight against violent extremism and their future cooperations via project web-page. New cooperations and projects will be long term benefits of the SAVE project
Cases of violence, suicide bombers, blasts in capital cities and planned terror attacks, combined with the worrying number of young people joining extremist groups and enlisting to fight for them abroad, had already proved that radicalisation and extremism remained a challenge for our societies. All types of extremists had turned out to be more globalized and they make use of opportunities provided by internet. As a result, it was getting difficult to detect the actions of these groups earlier and protect lives of innocent people.. By taking into account these realities we initiated SAVE Project as a prevention based approach. Our first target group was teachers. We created educational materials to equip them with the knowledge and the skills to detect the warning signs of extremism and how to respond to them. We prepared a guide “Empowering Teachers Against Extremism” and we organized a training activity for teachers in Poland. Then participant teachers organized training activities for the teachers in their schools. Our second direct target group was students. We focused on strengthening their resistance to extremism. These young people were defined as Peace Envoys and they were selected by other students by elections. With the help of these elections they experienced democracy from the first hand We organized two different LTT activities for young people. The first one was in Hungary. During this training activity the topics were selected to empower them on respect for human dignity, freedom (including freedom of expression), the rule of law and respect for human rights, citizenship, preventing stereotypes, discrimination, extremism, enriching democratic values, cultural diversity. Materials used in this training activity was brought together as a guide to be used by other young people both in and outside the partner organizations. These guide has been translated to Turkish, Polish, Slovenian, Hungarian and English. After the training young people organized training activities for their friends in their school who didn’t take part in this activity in Hungary. The second LTT activity towards young people focused on improving students critical thinking and media literacy skills. This training activity was released in Slovenia. Participants learnt how extremist and radical groups use online channels to deceive young people and recruit them in their nets. Youngsters learnt online propaganda techniques and how radical groups use them for their purposes. During the training activity participants learnt how to create their own propaganda as counter-extremist movement. They developed their own videos and disseminated it through their own and institutional social media channels. Training materials have been brought together as a guide and tranlated into English, Polish, Turkish, Hungarian and Slovenian so that participants of the training activity could use them to organize similar training activities for their schoolmates. Number and profile of participants There were seven partner organizations from 6 different countries. There was one local educational authority, one university, one NGO, one ICT company and three schools within partnership. In addition to these partners there were associated partner organizations from Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Italy, Macedonia and Romania. Methodology: Plan,do,check,act (PDCA) was the methodology of the project for the control and continuous improvement. We created a project management office for monitoring of the project and each step has been planned, checked and implemented successfully. The results of the projects were: 1- Project web page where all the carried out activities and produced intellectual out puts have been shared with wider 2- Europe wide baseline assessment, 3- Teacher training module, 4- Lesson plans and worksheets for teachers, 5- Guide for young people 6- Guide for young people for media literacy and onlien propaganda videos 7- Peace campaign videos 7- Research conducted for young people and teachers 8- E-Twinning project 9- Teacher training course content for the teachers from other countries Teachers from partner organizations have been equipped with the skills to discuss the extremism issues with their students. Young people had the chance to come together with other youngsters from different countries For majority of them it was for the first time in their lives to come together people from other countries. They got rid of their prejudices. They learnt extremism concept and how to protect them from online propaganda. Partner organizations improved their international cooperation skills. During the project new partnerships have been established. Partners from Poland, Slovenia, Hungary and Turkey have worked in 3 different youth project. Konya Il Mem prepared a training content to “Empower Teachers Against Extremism” It's been advertised via social media and School education gateway https://bit.ly/2lQzTAm