Following a meeting Crawley MP Henry Smith set up in June with the Home Secretary and invited Crawley Borough Council and Sussex Police to attend, the Home Office has now confirmed taking further action to help against the threat of extremism in Crawley and across the United Kingdom.

Henry Smith commented:

“Community relations in Crawley are good and I’m proud of our town for that, nevertheless there have been isolated incidents in recent years and months whereby international security threats have involved a few individuals with Crawley connections.

“It’s important that together we tackle possible radicalisation as a country but also as local communities and I welcome the Home Secretary listening to Crawley and delivering on projects to help reaffirm our environment where extremism is firmly rejected in all its forms.”

Notes:

In addition to the three projects The Home Office are also offering funding to deliver a workshop in support of RICU’s ‘Family Impact campaign’ branded by FAST, which contains the testimonies of family members of individuals who have travelled to Syria. The campaign seeks to discourage individuals to travel to Syria or Iraq by highlighting the distress caused to families when relatives travel to these areas.

The Home Office approved projects for Crawley are:

Web Guardians
The project will provide up to 50 women with the opportunity to complete the Jan Trust ‘Web Guardians’ programme. The training project empowers women through developing their skills in the use of technology (specifically the internet and social media), enabling them to monitor and guard their children against the threat of radicalisation.

Young Leaders project
Crawley Young Leaders’ will support the development of a peer support network of young people to challenge extremism in the borough. The project will operate in three parts. The first part will be awareness raising, the second part is targeted youth work involving the Active Change Foundation, leading to a third part, the development of a network of young leaders who can support other young people, through the development of peer trust, and providing timely advice/guidance including challenging extremist ideologies and a counter narrative to radical and extremist views.

‘One Extreme to the Other’
This theatre production ‘One Extreme to the Other’ (by GW Theatre) is aimed at pupils aged 15 to 18 in schools and colleges. It focuses on both far right and Islamic extremism and is designed to engage young people. The performances are followed by an open question session and seek to challenge extremism through increased perception, greater understanding and learning. This production has already been successfully delivered in a number of Prevent priority areas since 2012 to over 10,000 young people.