"Meet Vincent": Preventing radicalization that leads to violence

Who is Vincent and why is he being radicalized towards violence?

Hunched over tables in Montréal, with hexagons of many hues and colours, the Building Connections conference participants worked quickly to analyse the case study. There were clues tantalizing close, contained in little envelops strewn across the table where the hexagon board slowly came to shape.

Last week, the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative presented the latest tools to combat radicalization leading to violence in Canada during its Building Connections conference held in Montréal. These tools — the Hexagon, a mobile training website called Connections and e-learning course on child soldiers and youth at-risk through Dalhousie — will help frontline practitioners and police to be better prepared to intervene and prevent radicalization leading to violence within the Canadian context.

“These tools will help practitioners better understand the causes of radicalization leading to violence in all its forms and how to work across sectors to prevent it,” says Shelly Whitman, executive director of the Dallaire Initiative.

Hexagon-based learning

The Hexagon tool was co-developed between the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative and the Centre for Preventing Radicalization Leading to Violence (CPRLV), based in Montréal. The tool takes years of research developed by the CPRLV and adapts it in an interactive table top facilitation tool that can be used to demonstrate the complexities associated with radicalization leading to violence.

“The hexagon tool is designed to be adapted to the context that it is being used within. It encourages individuals to work in an interdisciplinary manner, to better understand the multitude of factors at play, and the processes by which someone might become radicalized to violence” states Joëlle Badman, education program manager for the Dallaire Initiative.

The Hexagon will be used in trainings across Canada with educators, police and civil society members who are on the frontlines of preventing radicalization leading to violence within Canada. This tool together with other resources, such as the Connection mobile training website and the Dalhousie College of Continuing Education E-Learning Course titled Child Soldiers and At-Risk Youth, that will provide additional training and knowledge mobilization opportunities.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer this opportunity for practitioners to review the latest development in research, cutting edge training and tools, interventions and set the way forward for a collaborative work in the future,” says Dr. Whitman