There were three main objectives in the project: 1) Develop and put at the disposal of youth workers innovative digital educational resources to understand and prevent violent extremism and radicalization. This involves creating an innovative digital toolbox directly relevant to everyday youth work to be placed online and containing: a) a constantly updatable, accessible and ready-to-use extremism online repository (open educational resources and analyses) with the most recent and evidence-based information about extremist scenes in Austria and Germany (in particular in Baden Württemberg, with a population comparable to Austria), and b) an online repository of ready-to-use innovative educational and digital tools for youth work which were developed specifically for the purpose of extremism prevention in youth work – including pedagogical material; 2) train youth workers in a number of specific training workshops in the practical use of these resources; and 3) evaluate the tools and the trainings and produce a report on best practices and best transferability options.
The phenomena of violent extremism and radicalisation amongst young people have become a growing concern in recent years in both Austria and Germany. Moreover, not least through the effects of the pandemic, extremist violence and adherence to extremist ideas, including conspiracy theories, have considerably increased in general Europe-wide, including with respect to online radicalisation. Counteracting these developments within youth work is of particular urgency, as youth work is confronted with an extremist landscape evolving at a fast pace. It is necessary that youth workers are constantly updated on the various forms, manifestations and narratives of extremist organisations in an accessible and easy to use manner. At the same time, it is necessary that they are able to use new digital tools and technologies to attract the interest of youth and utilise the latest evidence-based methods. The project developed two online repositories (one with a theoretical, one with a practical focus) to provide youth workers with such new digital tools, conducted a training for youth workers on their use (incl. training material) and evaluated both the repositories as well as the training to further improve the project outcomes.