The PREPARE project organised meaningful exchanges between the project partners and the expert public across Europe, including 4 coordination meetings, partly organised as seminars, as well as a preliminary expert meeting and a final conference.
> The preliminary expert meeting was organised with the NGO partners in Paris on 20 October 2017. Representatives of Violence Prevention Network and Denkzeit (Germany), Fryshuset (Sweden), European Forum for Restorative Justice (Belgium), Fondation Agir Contre l’Exclusion (France) and Efus (EU) discussed their respective approaches to preventing radicalisation and supporting the re-integration of radicalised offenders. A draft research methodology, including a questionnaire for local authorities, and methodological guidance for the pilot projects were produced as a result of this meeting.
> A first coordination meeting / seminar with all partners (PREPARE’s kick-off meeting) was held in Paris on 22 November 2017. In particular, representatives from the project partner municipalities exchanged on their specific local context as regards the issues tackled through PREPARE.
> A second coordination meeting / seminar with all partners was held in Malmö in cooperation with that city and Fryshuset on 15 and 16 March 2018. It provided a forum to discuss needs assessments, first ideas for local actions, as well as visits to expert projects and initiatives in the region.
Through different lectures and study visits organised by Efus and Fryshuset on programmes such as EXIT-Sweden in Stockholm, the Flamman project in Malmö and the VINK Platform in Copenhagen, the project partners had the opportunity to learn about these very advanced strategies and projects. A presentation was also made about the Swedish prison and probation services.
Moreover, all partners presented drafts for their local activities and had ample opportunities to collect feedback from the whole consortium.
> A third coordination meeting / seminar was organised in Málaga in cooperation with that city and the International Training Centre for Authorities and Leaders (CIFAL Málaga) on 29 and 30 November 2018. Key aspects were: Presentations and discussion on Málaga’s approach and strategy to prevent violent radicalisation and the role of probation and release; Study visits to two local projects accompanying vulnerable groups at reintegrating into local communities: “Asociación Arrabal-Aid” and “Proyecto Hogar”; and working sessions on the local activities, during which all partners presented their advances on the activities and had the opportunity to exchange in small groups.
> A fourth coordination meeting / seminar was held on 27 and 28 June 2019 in Avignon in cooperation with that city. The programme included: Roundtables on the local activities; a study visit to the Closed Educational Centre for the Protection of Youth Justice (CEF); an interactive evaluation session; and a visit to Avignon’s high court for a “Fictional Trial” production performed by young people in education as well as college students.
> The final event was held on 26 and 27 November 2019 in Berlin, in conjunction with the international conference “For safe cities worldwide – acting together against radicalisation and Islamist extremism”, co-organised by the Senate Department of the Interior and Sports Berlin, Berlin State Commission Against Violence and Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Efus hosted two conference sessions: the roundtable discussion “Shaping safe cities together – How do we counter Islamist terrorism and religious radicalisation?”, where it was joined by representatives from its member cities Barcelona, Berlin and Brussels as well as the Strong Cities Network, and a workshop session entitled “The PREPARE Project – Thinking deradicalisation locally – the role of local authorities”, which allowed to present the project publication and some of the local activities it conducted. The conference was attended by more than 200 participants.
