The event will be 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 to be held on 13 October 2016 (Brussels, BE) will seek 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 will be presented and discussed. Examples from outside Europe such as from South Africa, Colombia and Algeria will also be shared.  All the examples will be included in a publication will offer 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 will engage volunteering stakeholders from across Europe, will highlight the main features and characteristics of the projects and identify the elements and factors that are essential for success.  They will 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 will be 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 will both be described.

The idea is 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.

We are in the process of identifying organisations that engage volunteers in initiatives focused on promoting inclusion and/or preventing extremism and we intend to highlight in particular projects that would relate to one or more of the following categories: Gender Perspective; Offenders or ex-offenders and Use of ICT and social media. If you would like to share a good practice please get in touch ([email protected], [email protected]).