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17 March 2010
The Prevent project is committed to challenging discrimination and oppression, encouraging networking and connections, ensuring access and choice, influencing policy and programmes, prioritising community concerns, promoting long term and sustainable social change, reversing inequality and supporting community led collective action. It does so by reaching out to groups from Southall, Greenford, West Ealing and Acton and organising joint workshops and mentoring programmes to help the communities.
Last year the Sufi Muslim Council Conference was organised inconjunction with the Prevent Violent Extremism (PVE) programme to educate and enlighten attendees on the lesser known sects of Islam: Sufism. The conference saw 600 people in attendance, who were treated to a talk from the famed Sheikh Hisham Kabbani and spritually uplifting music from the Naqshbandi ensemble. More information on Sheikh Hisham Kabbani and the Naqshbandi ensemble can be found at http://naqshbandi.org/.
Further PVE work is carried out in participation with the Women's network who help organise events such as Tallo girls Night which provides information and personal development opportunities along with an holistic approach to education concerning emotional, spiritual, mental and physical health issues. Regular meetings with organisations such as the Muslim Women’s Online Forum and the West London Somali Society women’s group allow the community to voice their views on how PVE can be most successful. Through regular sessions with such groups, events can be organised like the 2009 Eid celebration held at the Oaktree Communtiy Centre to build community cohesion.
Along with events, frequent workshops have been set up in order to meet the needs of the community, which are highlighted as a result of discussions concerning PVE. These include ESOL, basic IT/Internet, Peer Mentoring Training, Khat and Drugs awareness workshops, sessions on Bullying, the Environment and PVE Awareness sessions. Futher to this PVE information packs were also distrubuted amongst the communities to provide more clearance on the scheme.
In future Prevent seeks to further improve community relations and increase the understanding between the local residents and Government agencies. Workshops and events are on going in order to ensure PVE is successful.
