The LOUD project

Part 2

The LOUD project

Efus conceived the LOUD project based on a reality observed by many European local authorities: the rise of social networks and the rapid spread of online hate speech that certain population groups, especially young people, are or feel victimised by is a breeding ground for intolerance and even more severe outcomes, such as extremism and violence in both online and physical spaces. Close to the ground, local authorities play an important role in strengthening social cohesion and inclusiveness. The LOUD (Local Young Leaders for Inclusion) project aimed to give them tools to better, or more fully, play this role according to their specific needs and context. Submitted for funding to the European Commission/Erasmus+ programme in 2018, it started in January 2019 for a duration of 30 months (the project was extended by six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic).

The aims

The overall aim was to foster inclusive environments for young people in order to prevent them from turning towards intolerance and extremist behaviour. In parallel, the aim was to reinforce the capacity of local authorities and young people to produce alternative narratives to intolerance and extremism.

The project had four specific objectives: counter any form of intolerance and extremist speech among young people build effective alternative narratives at the local level

empower young people to fight discrimination and extremist content promote exchanges between young Europeans around alternative narratives.

The activities

In order to meet these objectives, the project was structured around four types of activities: 1) local needs assessments; 2) training of young people; 3) design of alternative narrative campaigns, and finally 4) dissemination and evaluation of these campaigns. During the first stage of the diagnostic process in the nine project partner cities – Augsburg and Düsseldorf (Germany); Leuven (Belgium), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Spain), Rosny-sous-Bois, Montreuil, Lille and Valenciennes Métropole (France), and Pella (Greece) – Efus and the project experts worked with the cities to assess their needs and priorities, and to identify the local actors with whom they could work. This included finding out if there were issues concerning intolerance and discrimination locally and, if so, where and in what form, as well as identifying young local residents who could be involved in designing alternative narrative campaigns. The second step was to organise training sessions for young people on alternative narrative methodology and local campaign building. The original plan was to hold these courses in each of the nine project partner locations, but the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns and travel restrictions in various European countries led the project to reorganise these into online courses.

Four webinars, which were open to the public in order to disseminate the LOUD methodologies to other interested actors beyond the project partners, were held between March and June 2020 on the following themes:

Webinar 1 – How do alternative narratives play a role in preventing discrimination, polarisation and radicalisation at the local level?

What do successful alternative narrative campaigns look like?

Which actors should be involved and what are their roles?

Webinar 2 – How do you design an alternative narrative campaign?

How can we create messages that offer a positive alternative to discriminatory speeches?

Webinar 3 – How do you make an effective campaign that reaches the target audience and 'sells' the message? Webinar 4 – How can an alternative narrative campaign be measured and evaluated?

In the third stage, groups of young people selected by and in each of the nine partner local and regional authorities designed and implemented their alternative narrative campaigns with the help of Efus and the partner organisations. Finally, the fourth step was to disseminate these campaigns and evaluate their impact on three levels: 1. Evaluation of campaigns and their impact on the target audience

2. Evaluation of youth participation in initiatives against discrimination, polarisation and radicalisation 3. Evaluation of campaigns as tools to promote youth participation in prevention actions developed by local authorities.

The partners

The project partners were, in addition to the local and regional authorities already mentioned, the European NGO Eurocircle, which works to “foster the emergence of an intercultural European citizenship” and is based in Marseille (France), the Fondazione Mondinsieme, which works for cultural diversity and is based in Reggio Emilia (Italy), and the association streetwork@online, which works to prevent the Islamist radicalisation of youths in Berlin (Germany).