The field of countering violent extremism is rapidly growing and changing as we learn from practice and research. However, these rapid changes have made it difficult for practitioners in government and civil society roles to understand the latest good practices and lessons learned in countering violent extremism. In addition, they have not been accessible to most practitioners outside of the so-called Global North. For example, they have mostly only been available in English and have not been translated into other languages. These good practices and lessons learned are also rarely adapted for other contexts.
This curriculum is an attempt at overcoming these challenges. As such, it is designed to provide training for government and civil society workers on the field of countering violent extremism, whether or not they have prior experience with it. It is structured into ten learning modules and is accompanied by training materials including a facilitator’s guide, slide presentations, handouts, and pre-recorded webinars to allow for multi-day trainings on its content. They include a series of activities for each module and links to illustrative videos that provide primers for discussion and reflection. Each module also includes a “Further Learning Opportunities” section, which includes additional resources (as many as possible in your own language!) for more in-depth learning as well as some guiding questions on how to incorporate them into your own work. This training program is designed to be done either with in-person groups, led by a facilitator, or through online webinars in groups or individually. An overview of the learning modules is below. But first, a little about what this curriculum is and what it is not.
This curriculum delivers a contextually literate countering violent extremism and awarenessraising training program that is relevant to your context in an accessible way. It highlights the benefits of collaborative approaches beyond the use of military or securitized responses to violent extremism, drawing on good practices, and offers tools and guidance for easy adaptation to your local context and cultures. Finally, it encourages the early identification and mitigation of risks with programming, as well as ensuring a Do No Harm approach.
While this curriculum will offer guidance around how to design, implement, and monitor constructive responses to violent extremism, an understanding of project management is assumed. Therefore, it is not a training program on general project management skills, monitoring and evaluation, or on fundraising. Since the problem of violent extremism is complex and highly context-specific, it is also not a guide to the drivers of violent radicalization in your local context, nor does it proscribe the programs and policies that would be most effective. Instead, it introduces you to the guiding questions and tools necessary to make informed and effective choices in your own efforts to counter violent extremism.
This curriculum was developed by Search for Common Ground in collaboration with Hedayah and generously financed by the European Union. In addition to gathering the collective insights from the global experiences of Search for Common Ground and Hedayah in countering violent extremism, the curriculum was piloted in Kyrgyzstan and Jordan with local academics, practitioners, police officers, and civil society and government officials. Their contributions were invaluable and helped to better contextualize this training for their respective regions.
You can find the original publication here