News

UNESCO MGIEP’s international conference, organized with the State Government of Andhra Pradesh, showcased the role of games and digital learning in enabling a shift from “transmissive pedagogies” to “transformative pedagogies” to create peaceful and sustainable societies. TECH was held at Novotel, Vizag City, State of Andhra Pradesh, India. More information here

CPN-PREV, a network for preventing extremism attached to UQAM, receives $1.5 million in federal funding. 1.5 million over four years was provided to the Canadian Practitioners Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism (CPN-PREV), announced on November 14 by Pierrefonds-Dollard Liberal MP Frank Baylis on behalf of Canadian Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Ralph Goodale. This funding, from the Community Resiliency Fund, which is part of the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, is intended to enhance intervention programs across Canada. More information here.

Global Affairs Canada awards $1M in funding to Concordia-created anti-terrorism initiatives in the Middle East. The Canadian government recently awarded research funding to Concordia’s UNESCO co-chair in the Prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism, Vivek Venkatesh, who will receive $1,051,680 over two years for the development, implementation and evaluation of capacity building to counterterrorism in Lebanon, based on the SOMEONE (SOcial Media EducatiON Every day) initiative. More information here.

A Database for Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis In addition to the workshops being conducted in Lebanon and the “Hate to Hope” Massive Open Online Course, Project SOMEONE is developing a database to critically analyze online discourses related to themes and topics of interest to Lebanon and its neighbours. The database is intended to contribute to decision- and policy-making by researchers and public policy officials, as well as contributing to social action, counter-terrorism narratives and related practice by practitioners and community leaders internationally. The database will increase knowledge of patterns of online hate, extremism, misogyny and gender-based violence, and their uses for researchers,

New “Hate to Hope” Massive Open Online Course As part of our work with our Lebanese partners, Project Someone has developed “From Hate to Hope: Building Understanding and Resilience” which is a trilingual, interactive, non-credit Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Participants in the MOOC will: Explore the dynamics of hate including the ways in which people are manipulated to feel and express hate. Gain strategies for building resilience to hate through dialogue. Integrate best practices for using social media for advocacy. Analyze and develop strategies for using social media to build resilience in different sectors. Hate to Hope will be piloted in

Project Someone in Lebanon: An Overview Project SOMEONE in Lebanon has as its main objective the prevention of hate on social media platforms. With its 11 projects developed by collaborative research practitioners, we offer the Lebanese civic community a variety of curricular activities meant to open dialogue on understanding and building resilience against hate speech. While doing so, SOMEONE tailors those projects to best suit the needs of the community with which we work. Since April 2018 we have partnered with five local Lebanese NGOs who represent different minority groups. These include special needs individuals (Youth Association of the Blind