FHAR : Hybrid Training with Religious Community Leaders

The religious leaders have been trained by members of two partners that were willing to develop new forms of trainings together.

First, the ‘Faculté d’Etudes Politiques et en Economie Solidaire’ (Flepes), a private Faculty in the training of professionals working in the field of social action and SSE (social and solidarity economy).

Second, the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Strasbourg, the only public faculty of this kind in France.

Type of Organisation: Other

The ‘hybrid training’ practice was developed initially to meet the demand of the French Prefecture du Bas Rhin for involving Muslim religious leaders in the prevention of radicalisation of young people. There was therefore a need to train them, and to facilitate dialogue with other professionals working with young people, especially social workers. It was the first time in France that such a training was organised (social workers and teachers in France are not used to dealing with religious questions).

The term “hybrid” means that this training aims for the creation of concrete bridges between the different actors involved with young people: teachers, social actors, religious referents and families. Religious and non-religious actors are mixed in the training groups and each actor remains within his or her role.

For instance, the religious actor is not asked to become a social worker, nor is the social worker tasked with replacing the imam. On the contrary, we want each actor to be clear about his or her goals and responsibilities, and to be able to collaborate with other actors, in order to better meet the needs of young people.

Our working hypothesis is that such a hybridisation of socio-educational practices may be a clue to avoid a moving of young people towards radicalisation (early prevention).

The idea is to work with the participants, to analyse concrete situations with them and to elaborate solutions together. Texts and themes from philosophy and anthropology, theology, clinical psychology and law are read and discussed all together. To be clear, we do not discuss theological issues as such: we put the accent on the role and place of religious actors in society.

The participants are led to develop concrete social engineering projects aimed at young people, using the already existing networks of actors and creating interactions on this basis.

• Training modules
• Reference programme framework based on professional state diplomas
• Storytelling video in which partners and participants talk about their part in the ‘FHAR’ training (French video, 2019)

Address

Initiatives-Flepes,
43 Boulevard du Maréchal Joffre,
92340 Bourg-la-Reine,
France

Contact person: Margot Tandt-Nowak
Telephone: +33 (0)1 41 13 48 23
mtandt-nowakinitiatives [dot] asso [dot] fr (Email) | Website