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Extremely Together

Youth-led initiatives to prevent violent extremism: Inspiring practices from South & Southeast Asia

Together with a diverse group of civil society and youth-led organizations across South and Southeast Asia, we have assembled learnings and advice to help guide and inspire you on your own journey to build peace in your community.

  • Do you want to rally other young people to help you prevent violent extremism (PVE)?
  • Do you want to foster a strong sense of shared responsibility and create a healthy environment in which they can grow and thrive?
  • Do you want to grow your PVE movement and even create systemic change on a wider scale?
  • Do you want to be inspired by what young people can achieve?

Then our new guide, Building Peace Together: Youth-led initiatives to prevent violent extremism, is for you!

Youth-led initiatives to prevent violent extremism: Inspiring practices from South and Southeast Asia - the guide

How was the guide created?

Since 2020, the Kofi Annan Foundation and its Extremely Together initiative have been working with young leaders in South and Southeast Asia to prevent violent extremism in the region in the context of the “Leading the Way to Peace – Youth Together for Social Cohesion” project supported by the European Union.

In the context of this project, we collaborated with the Kristiyano-Islam Peace Library (KRIS) in the Philippines, the College of Youth Activism and Development (CYAAD) in Pakistan and the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) and Rupantar in Bangladesh.

Our new guide builds on our collective experience working with urban communities in the region and the lessons we learned from it.

Get the full guide

See the Executive Summary

What’s inside?

Outlined in the guide Building Peace Together: Youth-led initiatives to prevent violent extremism are a set of proven practices from over 14 countries across South and Southeast Asia that can serve as inspiration and guidance for activities linked to preventing violent extremism. We also invite you to explore new avenues for PVE action, including building bridges with academia and adopting an intersectional mindset.

How is the guide designed?

The guide is structured around three primary goals for fostering a youth-led approach to preventing violent extremism and seven main challenges that PVE practitioners face. It offers solutions for overcoming these challenges and takes you through the process of reaching out to young participants through to scaling your movement and putting it on the global map.

The ‘Building Peace Together: Youth-led initiatives to prevent violent extremism‘ guide also includes ten case studies from diverse local civil society organizations across South and Southeast Asia to demonstrate how these principles work in practice and inspire you when thinking about implementing your own creative approaches to PVE action.

How can it inspire youth?

While these practices are mainly inspired by our work with urban youth in South and Southeast Asia, we believe that the lessons learned from our experience can provide valuable insight into youth-led PVE action in various settings.

Youth movements drive positive action worldwide and prove that young people are active agents of change. By sharing these tips, we aim to encourage national or community-level grassroots organizations to pursue their efforts to prevent violent extremism in their area and give them the confidence to lead.

Youth movements drive positive action worldwide and prove that young people are active agents of change

We hope youth movements for peace will be inspired to grow, connect, and flourish.

Together we can make peace happen!