Extremely Together

Extremely Together and its Chapters are part of the Kofi Annan Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2016.

The mission of the Kofi Annan Foundation is to mobilise political will to overcome threats to peace, development, and human rights.

Legal status: Not-for-profit organisation

Type of Organisation: Foundation

Extremely Together (ET) is a youth-led movement that supports young people’s leadership in preventing violent extremism (PVE).

Started in 2016 by Kofi Annan and 10 young leaders working on PVE in their respective countries, the movement has now established four country Chapters in Somalia, Uganda, the Philippines, and Pakistan who work to promote youth-led solutions to violent extremism (VE) in their countries and beyond.

Since their creation in 2020, the Chapters have led large scale national peacebuilding activities, and worked together to influence regional and international policymaking. Building on innovative approaches to PVE like art-based advocacy or interfaith dialogue, ET works to harness the potential of youth to become actors of change in their own communities.

It equips them with the appropriate skills needed to identify, question, and reject violent extremist narratives. This also serves to encourage young people to become active citizens, openly challenge stereotypes, and support peers who may be struggling with issues related to VE or extremist recruitment.

Given the success of the four country Chapters in engaging with young people and working with them on such sensitive issues, the movement is now expanding to the Sahel region with the creation of two new Chapters in Niger and Burkina Faso underway.

East African Chapters:

In Somalia and Uganda, the 80 ET Champions who were trained to detect patterns of VE and provided with community mobilisation skills, engaged over 1,500 young people in PVE activities, including 40 trainings, advocacy, and outreach programs.

Experience sharing was facilitated between the two Chapters through a 4-day hybrid exchange and subsequent panel discussion in March 2021. During this exchange, participants swapped experiences and best practices, but also shared their culture and traditions with each other. Highlights from this exchange can be seen in this video and the lessons that the two Chapters shared with decision-makers can be found in this article.

South & Southeast Asian Chapters:

More than 2,400 young people were trained around the Philippines, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by our ET Chapter networks who led more than 70 projects and initiatives across the region.

Over 15,900 young people were engaged in different activities organised by our Chapters, and more than 1 million people were reached through social media.

As a result of this experience, the “Building Peace Together” Guide was created in consort with our Asian Chapters and is destined to help young people build peace in their communities. It outlines 3 main objectives that help foster a youth-led approach to PVE and addresses 7 major challenges that young PVE practitioners face in their work. It also includes 10 case studies from diverse youth-led and youth-centred groups and organisations from across the region. It remains our most popular publication with the landing page having been consulted almost 800 times.

A three-part video toolkit series was produced. It can be found on our regional chapter page alongside other resources that were produced as part of ET’s work in South and Southeast Asia.

The Chapter in the Philippines also produced a series of three printed magazines to make their research on PVE accessible to hard-to-reach communities. An overview of its contents can be found here

Address

Rue de Varembé 09-11
P.O.B. 157
1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland

Contact person: Maud Roure
Telephone: (+41) 229 197 520
rourekofiannanfoundation [dot] org (Email) | Website