- Country
- Finland
- Target Audience
- First responders or practitioners
- Local community organisations/NGOs
- Online community
- key themes association
- Training
- Vulnerable youth and youth engagement in P/CVE
- Year
- 2024
Organisation
Save the Children Finland
Save the Children Finland is a politically and religiously independent non-governmental organisation founded in 1922.
Save the Children is made up of Save the Children International and 30 member organisations raising funds and running programmes domestically and/or internationally.
Save the Children International is based in London.
Type of Organisation: NGO
Project description
RadicalWeb was a project (2018-2024) implemented by Save the Children Finland. It aimed to prevent online extremism and radicalisation that threatens young people’s welfare and rights. The overall objective was to build societal resilience by increasing the capacity of youth workers to counter and prevent radicalisation in youth.
The main aim of the project was totrain youth workers and other professionals working with young people on the issue of violent radicalisation and extremism. The purpose of the trainings was to increase understanding on the phenomenon and its possible manifestations and introduce tools to enable dialogue on the subject. Furthermore, these trainings aimed to convey the idea of youth work being key in preventing violent radicalisation. In addition to these trainings, the project organised in-depth workshops on key issues based on feedback from the trainings.
Additionally, the project conducted research on how violent extremism and radicalisation manifest online. The project aimed to increase understanding on the manifestation and spread of violent extremism in Finnish online environments.
National and international cooperation with relevant stakeholders and advocacy work (e.g. through multistakeholder webinars, expert blog) was also an integral part of the project.
- A pilot project was carried from 2018 to 2019 (with first pilot training conducted at the end of 2018). The next phase (RadicalWeb 2) ran from 2020 to 2022, and the third phase (RadicalWeb 3) from 2022 till the beginning of 2024.
The project was funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.
Content of the training
The training covered, among other things, the following themes:
- Addressing one’s own biases and preconceptions
- What is violent extremism and radicalisation?
- What causes violent extremism and radicalisation?
- The role and effects of the internet
- Group work on fictional cases
- A presentation by a former skinhead who has over 10 years’ experience in youth work and currently works on exit programming
- The situation in Finland
- National cooperation and legislation on P/CVE on the national and local levels in Finland
- Understanding radicalisation: How can radicalisation manifest in young people? How to recognise the signs?
- Intervention and discussing the issue with young people
- Group work: discussing personal cases that youth workers raise during the training
Deliverables
The pilot phase of the project conducted five trainings and published one report.
The current phase of the project will conduct 10 trainings, 15 in-depth workshops and an online training module.
Additionally, two reports will be published on the subject. One report on radicalisation in Finnish online environments, particularly far-right extremism, was published in early 2020. The report was completed during the pilot phase in 2019 and can be found in English online.
Published in September 2021, the second report explored how extremist groups recruit young people, with a focus on online environments. The report has not yet been translated into English but has been published online in Finnish.
The third report was published in 2023, and it focused on the role of conspiracy theories and fake news in violent extremism, and its impact on young people. It has been published only in Finnish and it can be found here.
The fourth report was published in 2024 and it discusses how hatred becomes a worldview and how hateful attitudes serve as fuel for violent ideological activity. It is only published in Finnish and it can be found here.