LocalDerad

Locally embedded Derad-Training for first-line-practitioners

Despite the veritable industry of Governmental Extremism and Hate Crime Prevent Programs since 2000, first-line practitioners who work on the ground in various local settings of youth work (youth facilities, street/ detached, school social work, youth correction etc.) still often feel they just don’t know what to do when being confronted with the problem. For sure, these programs have been too educational, cognitive, awareness oriented and mainly “multiplier” focused – often quite disconnected from the actual practitioners’ needs, and hardly ever engaging with at-risk target groups directly.

The Locally Embedded Derad-Training (LocalDerad) for first-line practitioners, developed by Cultures Interactive, is designed to fill this gap – and assist the on the ground youth workers in both rural areas with high neo-Nazi affinities and inner-city districts with ethno-nationalist hate cultures. In both areas mainstream youth is also implicated in working with at-risk young people. The LocalDerad - approach has been piloted over the last 3 years in collaboration with a board of field experts and research experts – and drew from CI’s previous model project work (Culture Areas, Fair Skills) as well as from recent RAN engagements in three RAN working groups. LocalDerad has just been awarded the Phineo Impact Label “The-Method-Works” after passing Phineo’s rigorous 4-stage evaluation procedure for good-practice NGO work.

The Locally Embedded Derad training combines methods of prevention and intervention. Specifically LocalDerad delivers practical tools for situation analysis, local assessment, self-evaluation, immersed observation, and narrative interviewing; it trains techniques of situational conflict transformation with radicalised young people, targeted role plays, exercises in hate crime prevention, diversity and anti-bias training; also local monitoring, awareness raising, and diversity enhancement strategies. Moreover, the LocalDerad training works out specific action plans for each practitioner in her/his field and provides coaching sessions with them.

These training items are grouped in 2-day modules focussing on: (1) Assessment and pro-active handling of incidents of extremism, hate crime and dehumanizing prejudice; (2) Democracy training and networking– systemic youth-work with community stakeholders; (3) The Fair Skills youth-cultural peer-derad training approach; (4) Doing gender in hot-spot areas – manliness/womanliness with young people at-risk of radicalisation and hate-cultures; (5) Group-oriented hostility / hatred within youth cultures – intervention, signposting, referral pathways, and the participants’ Action Plans and coaching results.

Alongside this altogether 10-day-training CI developed a shorter 2-4 days lasting training for international transfer, that conveys basic insights of the intervention plan and encourages practitioners in apllying the approaches in their own workcontexts. This transfer was tested and implemented in the course of the European Fair Skills project with partners in Hungary, Czech and Slovakia.