Societal impact of youth resilience trainings to prevent radicalization leading to violent extremism

This paper presents the impact case study of a resilience training programme in Belgium that was developed to prevent radicalization leading to violent extremism among 12 to 18 year old youngsters and their social environment. Based on data from an evaluation study of the trainings and from programme data of the past 7 years an societal impact case study of the programme has been developed. The most striking result is that the programme knows a strong policy impact on regional, national EU and even UN level whereas the reach of the programme within the core target group of youngsters and their social environment is rather limited so far. This shows an interesting discrepancy between the different impact levels and shows the diversity societal impact can have