Category: EN Armour

The conference organized by the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences today and tomorrow in Salzburg, is presented as part of the project “Resilience through education for democratic citizenship” funded by the Council of Europe and the European Commission and coordinated by the University of Salzburg (Austria).

In this conference, methods of citizen education and prevention of anti-democratic phenomena in social and youth work will be discussed and exchanged. The Euro-Arab Foundation has been invited to participate and Patricia Bueso and Jose Mª Riera, from Research and Projects department, will present the European project ARMOUR – Resilience Model for Young Minds, a project funded by the Internal Security Fund – European Union Police, led by the Euro-Arab Foundation in a consortium made up of nine entities from eight countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and Romania.

The ARMOUR project has come to an end, successfully achieving the objectives set. Promoted by a consortium of 9 entities from 8 different countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and Romania) led by the Euro-Arab Foundation and funded by the Internal Security Fund – European Union Police (GA nº.- 823683). ARMOUR started in 2019 with the aim that professionals and future professionals who work with children and young people, aged 10 and 18 years old, know how to prevent, detect and intervene on possible cases of radicalization and violent extremism in educational centers, social centers and other entities where minors are worked.

Over the last two years and half, the project partners have carried out an in-depth analysis of the factors that contribute to the phenomena of radicalization and societal polarization, through literature review, expert consultation, individual interviews and focus groups with first line practitioners and have been working on building a model for the prevention of radicalisation which worked on different levels and involved multiple social actors. Armour has explored a new learning model to provide individuals in the community and practitioners the know-how, as well as a toolkit consisting of an experimental creative lab architecture in which to create, test, and promote psychoeducational and community behavioural and communication strategies aimed at correcting reactions to perceived or real grievances and thus promote resilience to push and pull factors involved in advancing radicalization and violent extremism.

The ARMOUR project ends with the successful development and testing of the ARMOUR Experimental Labs on development of individual agency, community empowerment and resilience, and moderate and proportionate state response where special attention was placed on individual capacity building and social skills of support. The labs represented a safe environment where participants could experience alternative ways of responding to push and pull factors of social polarisation and extremism.

Through different activities and elaborated resources (such as a Train-the-trainer program, manuals, toolkits, workshops, e-Learning Courses…), ARMOUR has been increasing awareness and capacity of first-line practitioners on radicalization and polarization among children and youth; promoting interaction and cooperation among different stakeholders; promoting the views of moderate voices by engaging with the silent majority and integrating them into the experimental lab and developing and promoting concrete tools targeting vulnerable groups.

Thanks to its good results, the project will continue implementing the Experimental Laboratories in collaboration with different organizations and institutions and training public and private professionals in strengthening the resilience of young people.

All findings can be found on the ARMOUR website at

https://armourproject.eu

Check out ARMOUR Project Overview Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaFYZzZcYnY

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@TheARMOURmodel

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The Armour Model

The first course on “Psychoeducational Models of Intervention in the Classroom”, organized by the Euro-Arab Foundation as part of the actions designed by the European project ARMOUR: Radical Model of Resilience for Young Minds[TyC1] , will be held until February 8.

This project is aimed at frontline professionals in state institutions and civil society, working with young people susceptible and vulnerable to radicalization.

With the collaboration of the Andalusian CCOO Teaching Federation and taught by staff of the Euro-Arab Foundation, this first course is offered in virtual format and lasts one month, in which almost a hundred teachers from the Andalusian community have enrolled.

The course is divided into a first theoretical section on radicalization and its prevention, followed by 7 workshops: coaching and parenting; development of critical thinking; anger management; narrative therapy; simulation and debate; conflict resolution; principle of proportionality.

Its programming is based on the experimental laboratories developed by the ARMOUR project. They provide material for teachers to better understand the challenges and strategies recommended to overcome difficult situations in their daily practice, focusing on how radicalization can be managed, reversed and channeled towards positive forms of self-affirmation and success.

The Euro-Arab Foundation hopes that this first approach to the subject of radicalization by the teachers enrolled in this course will be the beginning of future training actions on issues of radicalization and prevention. The debates generated among the participants in this first training experience will undoubtedly allow perfecting future training actions which will continue to be given to the educational community on a permanent basis.

The ARMOUR (Radical Resilience Model for Young Minds) project, co-financed by the European Commission, in which the Euro-Arab Foundation works together with partners from eight European Union countries, has held a discussion group on the evaluation of projects for the prevention of violent extremism.

Experts and professionals from different areas participated in this discussion group. From the academic field, where they have been studying the processes of radicalization for years, to front-line professionals who carry out their activities in fields as different as the legal and educational or civil service. 

During the interesting discussion that took place in this session, issues related to the capabilities that certain professionals have when implementing and evaluating a program of this type were assessed; the different problems surrounding evaluation, such as the difficulty of defining certain objectives or the indicators used for evaluation, among others; the need to create specific evaluations, moving away from generalizations; the ethical dilemmas involved in evaluation as well as the most relevant methods, the costs involved in evaluation or the problems of moving from design to implementation. The discussion left instructive phrases such as “we must see what we did before and do not do now, and what was not done before and is done now” or categorical phrases such as “monitoring is as important as evaluation”.

The results of this focus group, in conjunction with another group to be held in the Netherlands, are intended to improve the evaluation proposal for a prevention program created within the framework of this project. This proposal consists of different modules offering keys and tools aimed to help frontline professionals in their task of educating and strengthening the resilience of young people in the face of radicalization. These modules will soon be available in course format from the First-line-practitioner (www.firstlinepractitioners.com) and Hermes (www.traininghermes.eu) platforms in different languages.

ARMOUR: https://armourproject.eu/