Community Advisory, Resource, and Education Centers

Approach

• • Purpose: 
    • To prevent extremist radicalization and political and hate-fueled violence, while equipping communities with tools, skills and services to: 1) support historically targeted and marginalized communities that continue to be harmed by extremism and political violence and 2) prevent those susceptible to extremist radicalization from radicalizing. 

• Problem statement 

• • Exposure to radicalizing content, supremacist ideologies, and harmful conspiracy theories is rising. Adults capable of recognizing individuals who are at risk of radicalization are few and far between, and even in situations where they can recognize warning signs of radicalization, they may still be at a loss for where to go for help and what to do. 
  • Currently, communities’ primary—and sometimes only—resources are securitized, carceral solutions that are typically tied to law enforcement. Further exacerbating this problem, mental health professionals are not equipped to address the specific problems that radicalization presents. Most mental health professionals are unaware of the ways supremacist ideologies fit into a broader milieu of mental distress, and even those who are aware are not trained to address those specific problems.
• • Main Goal: 
    • To develop a pilot, on-site, community-based mobile advisory center. This pilot center would be guided by public health methods and harm reduction principles aimed towards resilience-building outcomes. This will foreground community needs, prioritizing community stakeholder interests via a “listening-and-feedback first” strategy of testing, iteration, and execution. Through this process, we will develop evidence-based solutions that educate, equip, and empower stakeholders to proactively and appropriately intervene when harms have occurred or to prevent them altogether.  
• Theory of Change: 

• If we build a network of organizations, institutions, and individuals that offer direct services and social supports for marginalized and underserved populations, who are values-aligned with the CARE Center / PERIL vision, and amplify those resources within the communities we serve, AND 
• If we provide resources and training to community members to support victims and survivors of hate, bias, harassment, discrimination, and violence; to recognize red flags/warning signs of radicalization; to intervene with someone they suspect is becoming radicalized; to know where and how to get help, AND
• If we train local mental health professionals/practitioners in ways to effectively address radicalization, working to treat victims, survivors, and those affected by radicalization as well as those who are susceptible to becoming radicalized, AND
• If we raise awareness of CARE Center resources developed with and for K-12 schools, religious communities, and other local community groups through workshops/community events so as to refer people to CARE services, AND
• If we evaluate the effectiveness of CARE Center services (both qualitatively and quantitatively), AND
• If we gather feedback from community members, local organizations, and practitioners to design the program better, AND
• If we use our evidence to inform and create evaluative frameworks, processes, and standards for opening and scaling new CARE Centers and building the CARE network, 
• THEN we will have created a community network for services, resources, and interventions that are empirically demonstrated to be effective in bolstering community capacity to address radicalization using non-carceral solutions, to intervene when someone is endorsing extremist ideas, and to support people who have been targeted by hate-fueled violence. 

Grounding Principles

• People-Centered: We act with the knowledge that people are at the center of our work. Throughout our operations, our priorities are protecting the community’s best interests, increasing accessibility to resources, and speedy delivery of CARE services.  

• Evidence-Based: Strategies and knowledge shared with the community on recognizing and preventing radicalization are tested through rigorous research. The efficacy of these strategies can be found in the impact reports here (link). 

• Capacity-Building: Our goal is to equip communities with the tools to address radicalization in their social environments. We intend to collaborate with the community when providing resources and support to sustain progress made in creating healthier and more socially cohesive societies.