Promoting Inclusion Preventing Extremism (PIPE) took place on 13-14 October 2016 in Brussels, Belgium


Best Practices:

1. Gender Perspectives:
Ethnic Youth Support Team (UK) (download)
Mothers for Life (BE) (download)
Exitcirklen (DK) (download)

2. Media:
HejtAlert (PL) (download)
180 Degrees Turn (DE) (download)
We Are Like Oranges (SE) (download)

3. Sport/Art/Culture:
Bmechte (SE) (download)
Zinneke (BE) (download)
Fundacion Alfanar (ES) (download)
Salaam Peace (UK) (download)

PIPE was organised in the framework of the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the European Union and with the support of London House and Team London (European Volunteering Capital 2016).

The conference held on 13 October 2016 (Brussels, BE) sought to explore the role and impact of volunteers and volunteer-involving projects on promoting inclusion and preventing extremism.  Practice examples from across Europe addressing different target groups and showcasing different volunteering project models and volunteer profiles were presented and discussed. All the examples were included in a publication, offering analysis of the challenges faced in Europe concerning social inclusion and the risks of extremism from different belief groups and explain how the volunteer projects contribute to addressing these issues.

The publication and the conference, that engaged volunteering stakeholders from across Europe, highlight the main features and characteristics of the projects and identify the elements and factors that are essential for success.  They also identify any specific challenges that needed to be overcome and, if this was achieved, how it was done.  In this way, the examples can be more easily assessed for effective application in other countries and circumstances and the conference and publication will contribute to shared learning across Europe.  Projects with promoting inclusion and preventing extremism as a central objective are included alongside others where this has been a welcome secondary consequence. In a similar way, projects that include the target group as volunteers and those that engage with the target group as beneficiaries are described.

The idea was to focus on several different types of project that approach the issue from different perspectives such as through sport, fashion, environmental protection, in addition to the more well know approaches through specific training courses and capacity and trust building seminars, youth groups etc.