Think Creative - Issue 3

Field Notes

Leaders share insights on CVE approaches

m Citizen Security

Community, Family and Youth Resilience USAID’s Community, Family and Youth Resilience program is support- ingmore than a dozen after-school programs that provide children and youth with sports, tutoring, music, drama, dance and cultural activities. Together, these programs are reaching more than 570 youth in three Eastern and Southern Caribbean countries. Mali Peacebuilding, Stabili- zation and Reconciliation The five-year USAIDMali Peacebuild- ing, Stabilization and Reconciliation Project will work in 46 communes in central and northernMali to support the implementation of the 2015 Peace Accord and to respond to the spread of conflict into new regions. The project will engage communities inmon- itoring and responding to conflict, strengthening civic engagement and promoting inclusive governance. Honduras Dry Corridor After training at the prestigious agri- culture university Zamorano, a group of nutritionists and nutrition promot- ers are heading to the Dry Corridor region where they’ll support families to improve their nutrition, health practices and behavior. The project is funded by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program through theWorld Bank and implemented by Creative with INVEST-Honduras. Funded by USAID and implemented by the International Rescue Commit- tee and Creative, the Pakistan Reading Project recently hosted the “Policy Dialogue on GenderMainstream- ing in Education and Reading” in Islamabad. Participants discussed challenges, opportunities and the im- pact of government and civil society in strengthening gender equality in the education system. Education Pakistan Reading Project

Morocco // Fostering Peaceful Communities

m Governance

in their communities,” says Anouar, who is a high school Arabic teacher in addition to his work with this initiative. The project marks the first time Hassan II Mosque has collaborated with an international organization on a CVE-focused project. In Salé, the local team found that no organiza- tions were working with women and mothers on CVE, a critical opportunity to bolster prevention. They designed a program to equip women with tools to prevent radicalization within their families and communities. The program trained 60 mothers and unem- ployed young women on how to detect hate speech and signs of extremism, recognize signs of radicalization and provide support to loved ones at risk. “It was received very positively,” says Abdelilah Abdellaoui, a civil society leader who supported the initiative. “Most of the mothers went back to the community with their training and what they learned in the classroom. Often, they came back telling us about a friend or a neighbor who wanted to do the training as well.” By working through local organizations that had already garnered trust in these communi- ties, the project could effectively reach individ- uals at the greatest risk for radicalization and the community members best able to support those at-risk individuals in their families and neighborhoods, says Sarhrouny. Across all the initiatives, the leaders reported that themost significant changes they observed in participants were changes in attitudes about the nature of violent extremismand a new un- derstanding of their role in helping to prevent it. This change in attitudes symbolizes a major step forward for preventing and countering violent extremism, says Sarhrouny. “When you get into these types of trainings, when mothers start understanding and having these conversations among themselves, for example, that is the big change of attitude that can make a big difference in a community,” she says. n

To stemviolent extremism, solutionsmust be tailored to local drivers and needs, according to Moroccan leaders on the frontlines of communi- ty-based efforts to counter violent extremism. Hailing from neighborhoods with high levels of violent extremist activity and recruitment in the cities of Fès, Salé, Casablanca and Beni Mellal, these religious and civil society leaders have assessed local risk factors for violent extremism and implemented tailored interventions as part of the Fostering Peaceful Communities in Morocco project, which was funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bu- reau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations and implemented by Creative. From preparing religious students to prevent extremism to training unemployed mothers to recognize the signs of radicalization, the interventions had two critical characteristics in common that made them successful, according to Chief of Party Yasmina Sarhrouny: They were locally driven and collaborative. “As CVE practitioners, we see a lot of proj- ects that succeed and many others that don’t because they are designed elsewhere. They are cookie-cutter or they don’t necessarily bring all of the players together around the table,” says Sarhrouny. Across these communities, religious and civil society leaders came together to understand lo- cal risk factors for extremism and design smart interventions to mitigate them. For example, Abdeljalil Anouar and his Casa- blanca team found a lack of religious knowl- edge to be a risk factor for extremism, whereas religious literacy could be a force for preven- tion. With this insight, they decided to equip the next generation of religious leaders with tools to positively educate their communities and support prevention. “We chose to work with the students of the Hassan II School for Islamic Studies because they were already enabled with the technical skills, but we could enable themwith the soft skills and communication skills to work better

m Food Security

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