Kick-off meeting

The kick-off meeting of the Extremely EUnited project was organized by Intercultural Dialogue Platform on 27-01-2019 in the city of Brussels, with the attendance of participants from 14 partner organizations and 9 different European countries. It was a typical rainy morning in the city when guests began to arrive, but a feeling of enthusiasm reigned in the main hall. Some of the new comers seized the opportunity to get know each other because they knew they were going to work together for a long time; others eagerly took their place around the table in a silence full of expectations and perspectives, wondering what the beginning of that new adventure would be like. It was 10 a.m., finally the meeting had begun. Dr. Ugur Tok, the academic director of IDP, gave the introductory speech, outlining the salient features of the project and the historical context in which it was inserted. He underlined that the project is based on two inseparable pillars, radicalism prevention and social media, since its object is to prevent online radicalisation among the youth through peaceful ad resilient narratives. He also invited us to consider the tight connection between Islamic and far-right extremism, which often feed off each other in a vicious cycle of hate and violence. After the introduction, mutual knowledge was facilitated by a power point presentation prepared by each partner to illustrate its own organization. This was also the antechamber of a fruitful sharing of practices and lessons learnt from previous experiences between partners, which allowed to improve the campaign’s design and our understanding of the issue. The launch marked the end of the first part of the kick-off, giving the opportunity to take a breath for a while after such an intense morning, full of information, events and encounters. In the meantime, we also profited from the break to head over to the European Parliament, where we took several photos in memory of that meaningful day. One hour later we resumed the meeting. The participants talked about a plethora of topics and issues such as the role of the research in the project, that would be tasked with investigating existent narratives used by radical groups and conceiving alternative narratives in the online context, the kind of social channels to use and the most effective ways to outreach the target group. Special emphasis was given to the concept of youth empowerment, since young people would be the main characters of the spread of peaceful messages.  It was already pitch-black outside when we reached the end of the day; everyone felt tired but visibly satisfied with the results achieved. Then we decided to seal such an incredible day with a dinner at an Italian restaurant “Sole Mio”, which soon became the sign of our team spirit and collaboration.