Value the Difference - Preventing Youth Radicalisation - Theory & Practice of the European Youth Work

Aims of the tool

The booklet is built upon three main needs:
A) The first need consisted of opening up a critical, structured reflection on youth workers' ways of dealing with radicalised youth knowing that “non-formal educators” urgently need innovative knowledge, skills and methodologies to deal with youth radicalisation.
B) The second need was complementary to the previous one and was about youth workers' necessity of questioning their attitudes and behaviours as educators, being embedded in certain value systems, yet working with youth having perhaps different reference values.
C) The third need concerned the urgency to critically assess the youth centres’ and NGOs’ capacities and strategies to cooperate with other public and private stakeholders within and beyond the youth sector on the aforementioned issue.

Description of the tool

The booklet is the outcome of two Erasmus+ training courses, which respectively dealt with:

A) Over the course of Value the Difference – Preventing youth radicalisation - Volume I the organisers designed a mixture of interactive exercises and related reflection exercises in order to trigger a learning process focused on the youth workers' modus operandi with radicalised youth in order to make them acquire knowledge, new methods and skills through experiential learning on this issues. We simplified and translated sociological and pedagogical theories on youth radicalisation into a non-formal education learning setting to enhance participants' understanding of this complex phenomenon.
B) Over the course of Value the Difference – Preventing youth radicalisation - Volume II we also combined interactive exercises and related reflections putting focus on the problematic question of the coexistence of diverse value systems in the frame of a democratic and peaceful society and the role of youth work to achieve this goal. We made use of theories of pedagogy and sociology to enrich standard non-formal exercises especially during the stage of debriefing.