Fiscal Year 2022 Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grantee Abstracts

City of Aurora

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$302,966.00

The Aurora Police Department’s co-responder model, the Crisis Response Team houses a sub-unit, the Targeted Violence Prevention Program. This program has effectively interrupted potential incidents of targeted violence within Aurora, CO through a multi-disciplinary approach, pairing a mental health professional with a mental health trained law enforcement officer. This funding would increase the capacity of the Targeted Violence Prevention program through the addition of a full-time case manager with specialization in threat management techniques. This funding would also support current operations by providing opportunities for learning, continued collaboration, and the following of promising practices through the attendance of relevant threat assessment and management trainings, professional association memberships, and conferences. In alignment with the mission of the TVP program, funds would also be allocated toward the provision of training to the citizens of Aurora including school officials, faith-based communities, and all other community members who have an interest or may benefit from knowledge of targeted violence and its prevention efforts.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement
$332,491.00

This project seeks to develop a robust and sustainable local prevention framework against targeted violence in Southern Illinois by engaging a diverse array of local stakeholders to create a whole of society approach to violence prevention. The project is built around three specific project types under the promising practices track: raising societal awareness, media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives and civic engagement. The first phase of the project deploys and analyzes surveys of 41 counties in Southern Illinois that measures risk factors and field tests team-designed interventions built to lower political tensions and reduce support for political violence. The second phase focuses on implementing the preventive framework and has three main goals: 1) enhancing societal awareness among members of law enforcement and community/faith organizations on the current threat environment in the region by conducting a series of training sessions, 2) encouraging sustainable community engagement, education and resilience against radicalization to violence through training sessions for local community organizations that are tailored to prevalent local risk factors and 3) developing media literacy and online critical thinking skills among local college students, so that they are better equipped to combat an ever increasing volume of extremist content in the online/digital space.

State of Hawaii Office of Homeland Security

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$423,000.00

The State of Hawaii Office of Homeland Security (HIOHS) is the state agency charged with preventing terrorism in Hawaii. HIOHS’s whole-of-community strategy to prevent targeted violence includes training on violent extremism; establishing, training, and operating behavioral threat assessment and management teams (TATM); and developing a prevention network that connects the TATM and traditional fusion center partners with community resources. So far, HIOHS has trained various audiences on violent extremism; co-founded Threat Team Hawaii (formerly Threat Team Oahu) and Threat Team EDU; and hosted panels with community resources. HIOHS will expand violent extremism training and increase focus on lone offender dynamics; and increase civic engagement through additional outreach and education with community resources who can deescalate conflict within the community and help TAMT manage threats. HIOHS will partner with a major healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, to establish a team like TTE for the healthcare sector. Kaiser Permanente will work to improve threat management by collecting data within its own organization to look for differences in the presence or absence of social determinants of health. The analysis could help threat managers focus on mitigating the most relevant risk factors and stressors to prevent violence.

NYS Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams, Type 7: Referral Services
$500,000.00

The NYS Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) is requesting FY2022 TVTP funds to support the creation and advancement of Threat Assessment and Management (TAM) teams across upstate New York. This request will directly support its FY2020 award, which provided funding to DHSES to support the Rochester Threat Advisory Committee (ROCTAC), an existing TAM team in Monroe County, and to begin providing training and resources to other upstate regions to support the creation of TAM teams within their respective region. With FY2022 TVTP funds, DHSES will directly support the creation and sustainment of three new TAM Teams in upstate New York, the City of Buffalo/Erie County, Niagara County, and the City of Troy. FY2022 TVTP funds will also be used to continue expanding the successful ROCTAC model in Monroe County, as well as by DHSES to provide statewide training initiatives to include other interested New York State communities, conduct research and analysis on statewide trends related to targeted violence and terrorism prevention, and engagement opportunities to further socialize the ROCTAC model and stand-up additional TAM Teams across the state.

Berkeley County Council

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$383,563.00

Berkeley County Council will establish a coordinated Berkeley County Homeland Security Program including a county-wide multi-disciplinary threat assessment and management task force supported by education trainings, technology to mitigate, refer, and respond to targeted violence. Under the leadership of county law enforcement in partnership with emergency management and first responders, the task force will develop a sustainable countywide communication plan with standardized protocols regarding violent crime, increased awareness and competencies through training sessions and increase school and community-based efforts to encourage reporting of suspected behavior, threats and violent crimes. The task force will meet regularly to communicate, collaborate and consolidate knowledge from which plans are made, actions determined, and future decisions influenced regarding risk readiness and response.

The Berkeley County Homeland Security Program Threat Assessment and Management Task Force will enhance the long-range community wide emergency plan ensuring all citizens achieve a superior quality of life within a safe, active and healthy community."

Out Boulder County

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness
$153,579.00

Out Boulder County (OBC’s) LBGTQ Community Violence Prevention Project will increase violence prevention awareness and efforts among Colorado’s front range communities, with a focus on individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ). Prioritizing communities of color, and those living with mental health and substance use disorders, OBC will leverage its existing relationships with law enforcement at the local, county, and state level, in training and collaborative prevention planning and establish additional LGBTQ Liaison programs throughout the region. As a result, law enforcement professionals and departments will be better equipped to serve and protect LGBTQ individuals and groups from targeted violence; increase the frequency of comprehensive, and culturally competent responses to threats and acts of targeted violence to LGBTQ individuals & groups; increase reporting of threats and acts of targeted violence, and increased awareness of resources among LGBTQ community members.

Muflehun

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 6: Bystander Training
$374,996.00

The Tackle! Podcast is a true-crime genre series with the first season consisting of eight episodes. Each episode will be built on a well-researched case of a real incident that has occurred, with the history of the planned attack and the perpetrator, and interviews woven in from multiple individuals relevant to the story. The implemented Tackle! Upstander Training curriculum will be mapped onto the case studies, raising awareness of a sub-category of domestic terrorism and targeted violence, examining the risk and protective factors that existed in the perpetrator’s life, and the behavioral indicators that were present and could have been/were acted upon by upstanders. The cases will include examples of successful and thwarted attacks, and the existing or missing role of engaged upstanders and Local Prevention Frameworks. The Tackle! Podcast will have at least 200,000 targeted impressions, ensuring an audience of at least 20,000 unique listeners, focusing on the 35-54 year-old age group. The geographic focus will be towards difficult to reach, small and medium population size communities in the Northeast I-95 corridor (where the Muflehun CREWS project is already underway), and the Pacific Northwest region where there have historically been many incidents and insufficient allocation of funding for awareness or prevention programs.

Charleston County

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness
$198,628.00

Charleston County plans to improve its Local Prevention Framework by focusing on expanding the collective training to include an assessment protocol of risk indicators as well as behavioral indicators to prevent targeted violence. This training will be provided to multiple organizations of different disciplines; including co-responder teams (Law Enforcement/South Carolina Department of Mental Health specialty teams which interact with Charleston’s mental health community), Charleston County Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Charleston County Consolidated 9-1-1Center, Charleston Dorchester Mental Health Center, and Charleston Center (Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services). Through this funding, it is the objective of Charleston County to fully equip first responders and clinicians with the ability to:1. Identify behavioral health clients who may exhibit indicators of planning targeted violence 2. Conduct assessments of behavioral health clients to determine the degree of risk as needed 3. Implement a safety plan to provide the appropriate care and services the individual may need to increase protective factors and reduce risk factors/train the trainer piece should make this sustainable.

Southern University and A&M College

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness
$160,000.00

In January of 2022, eight HBCUs were the target of bomb threats. These threats caused major evacuations, class cancellations, and police investigations. A month later, in February, HBCUs received more bomb threats. More than 15 HBCUs were impacted, including Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge. Southern University Police recognize a great need for Southern University students to understand the behaviors and actions that represent pre-incident indicators, and the process of radicalization. The SU-TVTP program has three primary Objectives:

1. Create a Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Team designed to develop a prevention framework.
2. Conduct training for Campus Police and essential organizations designed to increase their knowledge on pre-incident indicators and the process of radicalization of targeted violence and terrorism; and
3. Conduct Training for Students designed to increase their knowledge on pre-incident indicators and the process of radicalization of targeted violence and terrorism.

The Children’s Hospital Corporation

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$634,307.00

The overall goal of this project is to equip and empower four local school districts (Bedford, Norton, Essex North and Hudson) to be able to better identify and help youth at risk for radicalization to violence or targeted violence and terrorism. The Children’s Hospital Corporation proposes to do this through the establishment of school-based threat assessment teams (TATs), increasing awareness of signs of radicalization or violence risk, facilitating referral pathways to the school-based TATs, and supporting robust assessment, management and intervention of referred youth through coordination and connection with Massachusetts Area Prevention (MAP) Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. The Children’s Hospital Corporation proposes to implement two projects: Raising societal awareness within schools (Project 1), and School Based Threat Assessment Teams (Project 2). Under Project 1, The Children’s Hospital Corporation will deliver awareness trainings for staff and students based on the existing DHS Community Awareness Briefing curriculum and customized for the school setting. Project 2 will establish school-based TATs in four Massachusetts school districts representing a range of geographic diversity and student populations.

District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams, Type 7: Referral Services, Type 3: Civic Engagement
$637,500.00

The District of Columbia is a city famous for its symbolic landmarks, international organizations, and is the seat of the U.S. federal government. As the Agency responsible for leading planning coordination, the District of Columbia’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency has applied a public health approach to address terrorism and targeted violence within the city through a multidisciplinary threat assessment and management team. This project aims to develop the threat management capabilities of the threat assessment and management team by creating a playbook outlining procedures for different types of interventions. In addition, the project will establish a protocol and mechanism for callers using the city’s 311 services to receive threat assessment and management resources. Finally, the project will build upon its Protect DC Initiative to engage community-based organizations through in-person events and targeted social media messaging to educate and empower communities to identify and report concerning behavior or communication that could indicate an individual mobilizing to violence.

The Carter Center

Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives
$99,372.00

To address the gap in media literacy education in the United States within a targeted violence and terrorism prevention context, The Carter Center will partner with Syracuse University to demonstrate the effectiveness of its media literacy curriculum in mitigating the harms presented by dis-, misinformation. This partnership would allow The Carter Center to deploy its curriculum modules over a two-year period in multiple classroom settings targeting a wide population aged 18 to 60 years old. Media literacy trainings build capacities in evaluating media sources, assessing media intent, interpreting media messages, understanding how the brain processes information, understanding how online media shapes perception, recognizing false and misleading information, investigating suspicious claims, and practicing good media hygiene. The effectiveness of these trainings will be measured via paired t-tests.

University of Rhode Island

Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs
$701,612.00

Disinformation, conspiracy theories, and propaganda have become large-scale social problems, shaping the way citizens view facts, define truth, and make decisions. Learning to critically analyze information, digital media, and popular culture can benefit all members of society by diminishing the appeal of us-vs-them thinking that activates strong emotions and oversimplifies ideas and information. The University of Rhode Island seeks to reach members of faith communities, military spouses and family members, public health and public safety workforce, K-12 educators, librarians, high school and college students, and media and public relations professionals in programs that include dialogue, active listening, and creative media production. In Program 1, online and face-to-face dialogues help demonstrate how to critically analyze propaganda, disinformation, and domestic extremism. In Program 2, high school and college educators learn how to integrate media literacy into civic education. In Program 3, high school and college students participate in a multimedia social media campaign, with support from local state public safety experts as well as communications and public relations professionals.

Maryland Department of Emergency Management

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 7: Referral Services, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$693,522.00

MDEM will work with Governor’s Office on Homeland Security (GOHS), other State departments and agencies to include the Maryland State Police, Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, Maryland State Department of Education, the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security (CHHS), Frederick Community College-Mid-Atlantic Center for Emergency Management (FCC-MACEM), Global Peace Foundation

(GPF), and Intelligence Consulting Partners (ICP) to achieve the following objectives: 1) enhance the threat assessment and management capabilities of local jurisdictions by developing a threat assessment framework, conducting trainings for implementing the framework, and developing protocols for handling referrals; 2) ensure broad awareness of the threat of targeted violence and terrorism among potential referral sources (e.g. faith leaders, educators, school counselors, youth mentors, mental health and social service providers, law enforcement,

211/311 operators) by conducting awareness-raising trainings and community engagement events; and 3) counter terrorists and violent extremists' influence online through media literacy trainings for university students; The project activities will directly reach 2,150 participants across Maryland State.

Fairfax County Police Department

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams, Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 6: Bystander Training
$215,000.00

The proposed project will develop a threat assessment and management (TAM) team, based on national best practices, made up of law enforcement, mental health, and community services personnel for the Northern Virginia region. This core team will produce threat assessments based on an appraisal of observed (or reasonably observable) behaviors to identify potentially dangerous or violent situations, to investigate/assess them, and to manage them. The overall goal will be to ensure the safety of all involved, while respecting individual privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties.

To complement the threat assessment and management program, awareness training for community members and partners will be provided quarterly. The training curriculum will cover behavioral indicators of mobilization or radicalization to violence and how to refer individuals to the TAM team or law enforcement if there is a risk of imminent harm."

onePULSE Foundation

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives
$247,900.00

onePULSE Foundation was created to memorialize the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016 to ensure Pulse’s legacy of love, acceptance and hope was never lost. Since this attack, onePULSE has been increasing societal awareness of the shooting, and stretching the boundaries on controversial topics and increasing dialogue around the LGBTQ+ community and resilience. Using the onePULSE Academy, which is the education arm of onePULSE, whose purpose is to promote acceptance and inclusion through innovative, reflective, experiential learning methods. Its four specific functions are to provide education programs that promote acceptance and inclusion; educational site tours that create safer learning communities and an education hub for knowledge and information on social issues. onePULSE Academy aims to positively impact social change at the individual, group, and community levels.

Lewis University

Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives
$157,707.00

H2i at Lewis University proposes to:

1. Develop a How2INFORM (H2i) Educators Toolkit to support media literacy training in classrooms.
2. Provide training for educators by traveling to locations throughout the state of Illinois and online, via h2i.info, and online modules available for professional development hours.
3. Maintain and improve upon h2i.info, including regular re-evaluation of materials and resources, which currently consists of videos, websites, publications, and podcasts helpful in combating misinformation.
4. These activities will support the TVTP Grant Program’s Objective 2 by creating an educational platform increasing media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives for educators, concerned adults, and students. Free tools and resources will be provided equitably to communities within the state to help combat online misinformation."

Karuna Center for Peacebuilding

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs, Type 7: Referral Services
$258,298.00

Youth violence is a critical threat to communities and schools countrywide and schools are increasingly unsafe and dangerous spaces that have become the breeding grounds for radicalization to violence. School communities are unaware of the radicalization process and are unprepared to prevent radicalization to violence, much less support radicalized students to find exit opportunities. The “BRAVE Schools” Program will improve local school prevention capabilities by strengthening school resilience to extremism and targeted violence through: 1) increasing the capacity of middle and high school “Student Resource Teams (SRTs)” to effectively identify students susceptible and at-risk of targeted violence and terrorism through training, ongoing support, and network-building; and 2) improving student awareness through sensitization and discussion forums to increase their understanding of and resilience to extremist influences and access to effective, student-centered referral mechanisms.

Cure Violence Global

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams, Type 7: Referral Services
$796,328.00

Capacity-building to Undermine Recruitment to Extremism in the Pacific Northwest (CURE: PNW) seeks to prevent violence and increase immunity against radicalization to violence by enhancing local capacity to do primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention endeavors. This project will be seamlessly blended with and add essential elements to Cure Violence Global’s (CVG) Ctrl+Alt+Del-Hate:PDX (CAHD:PDX) initiative, augmenting CADH:PDX’s threat assessment and management, referral services, and societal awareness components. These added components, which address gaps identified in the early months of implementation of CADH:PDX, will help to firmly establish the local prevention framework by building capacities of individuals and organizations to identify and manage potential threats, effectively operate the SHIFT-HATE Helpline (a referral service specifically for individuals radicalized or at risk of being radicalized to violence), and train CBOs that provide wrap-around services to addresses risk factors related to radicalization to violence. CURE:PNW includes online and offline activities facilitated by experts inside and outside the Portland Metropolitan area who will work with local community members to provide skills and resources to key stakeholders that are needed to build a sustainable local prevention framework for preventing individuals from committing violence and from being radicalized to violence.

University of Hawaii

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 6: Bystander Training
$533,285.00

UH West O’ahu intends to create opportunities to further enhance and strengthen local threat assessment and management capabilities within the state of Hawaii. Those opportunities include the following: creating free accessible training; collaborating with an established community-based partner whose mission is to address violence, abuse and trauma, and by creating and mobilizing a bystander intervention awareness program that encourages safe options for reporting for the local community.

While the creation of an available collection of training resources alone will not be sufficient, collaborating with the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (IVAT) through their Hawai’i Pacific Brach- Ho’omaluhia to create a training track on threat assessment as a complimentary topic area to trainings already presented at their annual summit, will help bridge local efforts and provide excellent cross training within the community. The annual summit will assist in the efforts to infuse trauma and culturally informed practices into threat assessment and violence prevention education to the state of Hawai’i. Furthermore, a generalized local bystander intervention awareness campaign and training will help the community recognize behavior that should be reported, as well as other options for safe interventions that will benefit the community as a whole.

International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness
$147,510.00

In considering how to address targeted violence in the United States, law enforcement personnel, specifically police officers and sheriffs’ deputies, are the first line of defense, countering infiltration and recruitment attempts in their communities. The proposed program aims to train law enforcement professionals to effectively identify and intervene with people who are at-risk of radicalization, are being, or have already been radicalized, as well as to protect against community and policing infiltration attempts by violent extremist groups trying to gain access to vulnerable community members and to police training and weapons. The goal of this project is to provide a comprehensive, evidence-based series of Zoom conferences and brief concept papers to be delivered to police across the country in order to educate and prepare them for a new era of violent extremist radicalization and recruitment.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives
$750,000.00

This project targets disinformation as a means of devaluing a recruitment tool for radicalization. The Wilson Center’s Serious Games Initiative will develop an educational digital game and supportive materials for educating students in secondary schools in Northeast Washington Educational Service District 101 (ESD 101) in Washington State on disinformation. Specifically, this digital educational game and learning program will help students understand different strategies used to spread disinformation by malignant actors and provide students with a hands-on learning experience around strategies and policies to combat disinformation at the institutional level.

Urban Rural Action

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams, Type 7: Referral Services
$769,190.00

Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence (UPTV) will create a sustainable Local Prevention Framework (LPF) in south-central Pennsylvania that prevents targeted violence by (1) strengthening social cohesion, (2) forming and deploying Threat Assessment and Management (TAM) teams led by local organizations, and (3) raising community awareness of targeted violence. Urban Rural Action will form a cohort of 30 Pennsylvania Uniters (with ideological, racial, generational, and geographic diversity) who will collaborate on community partner-led TAM teams to implement prevention interventions and raise community awareness of the LPF. UR Action will implement UPTV with support from News Literacy Project and five community organizations in south-central PA:CONTACT Helpline, Just for Today Recovery & Veteran’s Support Services, Mediation Services of Adams County, South Central Community Action Programs, and Suicide Prevention of York.

Lee Memorial Health System

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$110,000.00

While workplace violence within healthcare and directed at healthcare workers was an issue prior to the pandemic, it has worsened considerably. In 2020 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that health care workers accounted for nearly three-quarters of violence-related workplace injuries and illnesses, with hospital workers six times more likely to suffer job violence than private sector workers as a whole. This project aims to create early warning, threat assessment and threat management systems for the 4 acute care hospitals, 2 specialty hospitals and more than 80 community-based care facilities throughout the health system. The goal of these systems is to utilize best practice, scientific based assessment tools to identify whether a person may be on a pathway to violence and if so, implement threat management and safety plans to interrupt the potential for the violence to occur. Workers who dedicate themselves to saving lives deserve a safe environment – free of violence and intimidation – in which to deliver care.

Global Peace Foundation

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs
$275,341.00

This project will address that need through a series of integrated programs in the state of Maryland, with a special focus on Anne Arundel and Montgomery counties. The purpose of these programs is to increase community awareness on risk factors for radicalization to violence, build youth resilience by enhancing protective factors, and strengthen community engagement and resilience to reduce the number of individuals likely to radicalize to violence. The programs will include awareness-raising trainings for 1,000 individuals from at least 4 law-enforcement agencies in Maryland, a series of both virtual and in-person knowledge-exchange sessions between New Jersey and Maryland law enforcement personnel, awareness-raising trainings for 500 individuals from youth-serving organizations, a series of both virtual and in-person knowledge-exchange for New Jersey and Maryland youth-serving stakeholders, planning sessions between youth and youth serving organizations to collaborate and design community service projects, an in-person leadership development convening for 50 youth, community-wide briefings for youth, community members, parents, educators, and other stakeholders, and community engagement events to facilitate engagement between diverse communities and implement the you-designed service projects.

University of Dayton

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement
$352,109.00

The University of Dayton Human Rights Center will implement the Preventing Radicalization to Extremist Violence through Education, Network-Building and Training in Southwest Ohio (PREVENTS-OH) project, which aims to develop a proactive, informed and resilient network of organizations, coalitions and civic entities aware and capable of collaborating to prevent domestic violent extremism in Southwest Ohio. PREVENTS-OH will raise awareness of the radicalization to violence process and establish a local prevention framework to counter it, develop and implement modules on the risks of and protective factors for radicalization to violence related to media literacy and online critical thinking for students, and improve civic engagement and build intergroup trust by conducting community dialogues on sensitive topics related to domestic violent extremism and developing local dialogue facilitation capacities. These efforts will result in more proactive and effective collaboration among stakeholders to prevent radicalization and extremist violence based on a shared understanding of the problem. The project will also generate lessons learned and best practices to inform ongoing and future prevention of domestic violent extremism efforts, both in Southwest Ohio and in other regions of the state or country as applicable.

Texas Department of Public Safety, Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 6: Bystander Training
$286,381.00

The TxDPS TVTP Grant Program project will: Develop training courses and educational materials to enhance the understanding of domestic radicalization paths and indicators, domestic terrorism TTPs, whole community information sharing, and other related issues among whole community partners – to include businesses, faith-based and community organizations, nonprofit groups, schools and academia, and local and regional public sector representatives.

Deliver in-person classroom training courses to whole community partners in Austin, TX to create a TVTP Liaison Partner Program (which TxDPS will expand across Texas following the grant’s period of performance) and enhance whole community collaboration focused on targeted violence and terrorism prevention.

Alcorn State University

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness
$160,000.00

Preventing radicalism, while a pressing national issue, is not a top priority for police in Southwest, MS that must address violent crime, drugs, gangs, and a host of other public safety concerns. Alcorn State University is proposing the Community Radicalization to Violence Training program to address the growing violence in our region and in our nation with domestic terrorism and race-based violence. It is aimed to assist Alcorn State University and surrounding communities to combat threats and other societal harms that lead to groups coming together with the intent of causing harm to property or life. This project is necessary due to the growing threats that HBCUS have encountered since 2018. We anticipate that providing trainings of this nature will not only assist the University in addressing this growing concern, but also assist the surrounding counties with skills and knowledge to help fight violence within their communities.

United States Esports Association

Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement, Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs"
$226,260.00

The present project is an out-of-school-time (OST) program for college students that comprises leadership, activism, and development components in relation to competitive videogaming and esports. The leadership component focuses on character-building and development of grit and rigor in students’ academic, personal, and professional lives. The activism component focuses on community engagement and participation in OST civic activities, including the nonprofit and government sectors. The development component focuses on workforce development activities, including skills training and experiential learning with on-the-job and projects-based activities. The present project achieves resilience to radicalization within local communities and online by leveraging young people’s participation in esports as well as their self-drive and aspirations for success as vehicles for developing, integrating, and delivering a TVTP framework particular to their unique risk profile. As esports grows in cultural impact, comorbid risk factors must be addressed early before bad form sets in. Esports’ immense sociocultural diversity opens the door for malign state and non-state actors to radicalize our young people, especially through esports washing by authoritarian regimes. The present project, therefore, is a comprehensive hedge against the emergence of esports-based TVT throughout the United States by matching TVTP efforts to lifespan development and cultural interests.

International Documentary Foundation

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives
$193,410.00

“The Cure For Hate" is a secondary school-focused documentary film impact program that uses ex-neo Nazi Tony McAleer’s powerful personal journey of atonement to Auschwitz - and his long journey back from a life in hate groups - as a vehicle for raising awareness of how and why individuals radicalize to violence. The project keeps the important lessons of the Holocaust alive - in a way that connects directly to the present and the world around us. This program’s fundamental aim is to help young people understand the roots of hatred – the conditions under which it thrives – and ways to prevent its spread.

The curriculum and materials have been designed to provide young people with specific tools to counter “othering” tendencies, teach digital literacy, and promote community resiliency. This project is phase one of a larger effort, geared towards making the program and its materials available for classroom use throughout the US. To this end, it will deploy a high profile educational & community impact screening tour to 21 communities – in order to elevate attention around the program, underscore its value to broader communities, and promote future educational & institutional partnerships.

Middlebury's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC)

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement
$699,763.00

Over the past decade, video games have increasingly become focal points of social activity and identity creation for adolescents and young adults. Relationships made and fostered within game ecosystems routinely cross over into the real world and are impactful parts of local communities. Correspondingly, extremists have used video games and targeted video game communities for activities ranging from propaganda creation to terrorist mobilization and training. Game developers in general–from small, independent studios to billion-dollar multinational corporations–have lagged in awareness of how extremists may attempt to exploit their games, and how their communities can be targeted for radicalization. This joint project from the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, Take This, and Logically seeks to develop a shared framework for understanding extremism in games. This includes the development of a set of best practices and centralized resources for monitoring and evaluation of extremist activities as well as a series of training workshops for the monitoring, detection, and prevention of extremist exploitation in gaming spaces for community managers, multiplayer designers, lore developers, mechanics designers, and trust and safety professionals.

Music in Common

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs
$441,300.00

Racial hatred is pervasive, current, and can lead to violent extremism. Music in Common’s theory of change contends that employing the power of music to inspire social cohesion and integration gives voice to Black and White youth expanding racial understanding and promoting a discourse of non-violence. The Black LP Experience extends the reach of the Black Legacy Project to promote lasting change through sharing its conversations and collaborations with Americans from all backgrounds and identities. The Experience provides opportunities for meaningful dialogue that ingrain these messages into new audiences.

American University (AU) Peril

Type 2: Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives, Type 3: Civic Engagement
$749,828.00

This project will scale up evidence-based, short-form video inoculation strategies interrupting pathways to violent extremism. The project’s theory of change is that creating sustainable capacity in short-form video-based inoculation techniques will create scalable prevention approaches across the nation. The project goal is to increase local leaders’ and practitioners’ capacity to utilize innovative visual technology and inoculation tactics to create off-ramps from violent extremism. The project includes three components: 1) In-person and online train-the-trainers programs to teach local leaders and practitioners how to design, produce, and implement inoculation videos as a tool for preventing extremist violence; 2) an accompanying video- and text-based web portal to support learners pre- and post-training with evidence-based resources, video tools, and guidelines to increase practitioner ability to implement practical inoculation strategies; 3) a how-to guide for evaluating the effectiveness of locally-designed, video-based interventions. The Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University will partner with media production company Long Story Short Media (LSS). Target audiences are selected based upon a “Whole Community” approach, to include leaders and practitioners in a wide variety of groups, including civic organizations, schools, universities, state and local governments, employers, military, faith communities, and sports teams."

Parents 4 Peace

Type1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 7 Referral Services
$749,546.00

Violent extremism represents a complex and rapidly evolving threat to the safety and security of communities across the United States. Today’s threat landscape features multiple drivers, actors and alliances that transcend national borders and ideologies. There remains great urgency to design and execute initiatives aimed at effectively tackling the problem. Consistent with a public health approach, this means addressing prevention across the spectrum of violent extremism - from preventing initial involvement, to facilitating exit from relevant groups. Parents 4 Peace (P4P) proposes a collaboration between P4P, a non-governmental organization at the forefront of facilitating exit from violent extremism, and experts on targeted violence from Georgia State University. The proposed collaboration will not only increase the operational and management capabilities of P4P but will see the design and implementation of quality assurance protocols, measurement and evaluation to enhance the effectiveness of P4P’s already vital services. Furthermore, this collaboration will see the development of an evidence-led, training curriculum aimed at providing formers who work in the peer-support prevention space with the knowledge, skills and self-reflection needed to maximize their effectiveness at interventions. This innovative collaboration is designed to produce several immediate, medium-, and long-term practical steps to directly reduce violent extremism.

North America Scholastic E-Sports Federation (NASEF)

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs
$750,000.00

The Scholastic Esports as Resilient Safe Spaces Program, led by the North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) in strong partnership with multiple state affiliates / partners, and 6-8 selected pilot geographies based at high school campuses across the continental US, will gather young people in a safe, neutral, and inspiring community using scholastic esports as a vehicle for youth development, college / career pathway identification and readiness, and an attention to social-emotional practices in a dynamic, peer mentor and adult supported group (club) setting.

Students will create Clubs and collaborate on building their Club Charter, Code of Conduct, and Community Development & Sustainability Plan with goals and objectives, and compete in scholastic esports, testing their skills, innovation, and creativity in real-world challenges. The students will utilize NASEF’s learning framework as the basis for Club activities that promote the diversity, equity and inclusion of all interested youth, the outcomes of which have been successfully demonstrated as competitive and educational opportunities at the local, regional, state, national and international levels.

Nu Art Education, Inc.

$600,000.00

The mental health of students as well as students’ inability to engage with peers is promoting violence and destructive coping mechanisms. Following the theory of change that utilizing theater arts as a tool to teach and practice conflict resolution strategies in the classroom will engage students and promote positive connections to peers while building community thus decreasing the risk factors associated with targeted violence, NorCal School of the Arts will create and implement a Theater Arts and Conflict Resolution Integration program to vulnerable populations in Sacramento’s title 1 schools.

NorCal School of the Arts project proposal includes professional development for the classroom teachers on theater arts & conflict resolution integrated strategies for the classroom as well as a series of classes for students taught by NorCal teaching artists. NorCal is currently in 150 classrooms in title 1 schools in Sacramento City Unified School District providing Theater Arts & SEL classes, serving over 4000 students. This proposal aims to expand the program and create a new curriculum that engages students in conflict resolution and violence prevention strategies through a kinesthetic, artistic approach using theater arts exercises, theater games and role-playing situations of conflict to engage the students in practicing nonviolent solutions."

Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication

$592,598.00

This Innovation track project proposal focuses on understanding how media literacy can offer a method for mediating cognitive and emotional responses in an extended reality (virtual, augmented, and mixed reality) environment. This project will create and test Media Literacy interventions focused on Harmful Information in virtual spaces, to inform the prevention of extremism and violent content in the metaverse. Immersive virtual spaces such as virtual reality and the metaverse create more visceral emotions than traditional online spaces such as the internet, which makes it a potentially high-risk environment for manipulation. Terrorist recruiters and violent extremists are active in online social spaces and will most certainly target new forms of technology for their efforts to spread conspiracy theories, air grievances, and to craft misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. This study will (1) identify key concepts and techniques specifically related to persuasion in XR contexts, and (2) apply these findings to create gamified interventions based on existing research from media literacy. This study will pilot these experiences for members of the extended reality (XR) community in the target recruitment age.

University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START)

$749,504.00

The overall goal of this program is to build on the strengths and capabilities of the veteran and military family community to sustainably reduce targeted violence and terrorism risk among this population. The program takes a public health approach to establishing a national targeted violence and terrorism prevention framework across the veteran and military family community supported by an innovative multi-sectoral, and multidisciplinary ecosystem. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, College Park and We the Veterans (WtV) will coalesce relevant entities within this ecosystem into a steering group comprised of representatives from the veteran and military family community, and three multisectoral working groups on Civic Engagement, Mitigating Mis/Dis/Malinformation (MDM), and Extremist Violence Prevention (EVP). START and WtV will focus on primary prevention initially to establish trust, build awareness, and increase lines of communication among assets within this ecosystem through three projects that are generally aligned with the TVTP “Promising Practices” track. These primary prevention initiatives will pave the way for secondary and tertiary prevention program proposals generated collaboratively with working group participants. Once established, the program objective will be to continuously enhance and expand on this framework through research-informed initiatives.

Teachers College, Columbia University

$748,494.00

By creating a peer-to-peer learning and mentorship program for middle-school and high- school students focused on ‘Othering’, as a form of targeted violence, this project has three goals:

1. to create a training for students in which peer-to-peer models of engagement will lead to the creation of local prevention campaigns that address forms of ‘Othering’ in physical, virtual, and social spaces;
2. to incubate these student-led local prevention campaigns from conceptualization to implementation; and
3. to study the emergent local prevention frameworks that address ‘Othering’ in schools. The theory of change centers the students as prevention advocates who will serve as change-makers against forms of ‘Othering’ in U.S schools. This project’s framework is grounded in challenging the binary concept of the ‘other,’ in which theoretical opposites, real or imagined, are strictly defined and set off against one another.

Drawing on two primary populations of interest, the team will conduct a mixed methods analysis with a sample of participating middle school/high-school students (n=250) to understand the impact of this innovative peer-to-peer training program in building resilience to ‘Othering’ in their local communities. The program will initiate and study novel peer-to-peer initiatives that amplify protective factors against targeted violence."

Michigan State University

$878,283.00

Studies have found links between adolescents’ delinquent behaviors and subsequent radicalization and violent extremism. To disrupt this pathway, the current proposal addresses objective 2 of the TVTP grant program via 1) an innovative intervention with 18- to 21-year-olds incarcerated at Rikers Island, New York City; and 2) a multimedia awareness campaign in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize finalist podcast, Ear Hustle, and the oldest Black newspaper in New York, the New York Amsterdam News. At Rikers Island, this project aims to expand implementation of a theater-based intervention Drama Club, bolstered by an evaluation to assess the effectiveness of Drama Club in increasing social emotional skills, non-violent conflict resolution, and hope, while decreasing radicalization and violence among incarcerated and court-involved youth. We will raise community awareness about preventing radicalization to violence through award-winning multimedia outlets, Ear Hustle and the New York Amsterdam News, to tell the stories of system-involved youth to audiences around the country. This community-partnered project is grounded in the humanity of youth and a shared understanding that extreme violence is not inevitable. Prevention begins with understanding and then intervening on risk factors that lay the path to violent extremism, while promoting protective factors at individual and community levels.

Arizona State University

$659,327.00

The student-led, Middlebury Institute of International Studies Invent2Prevent team, in collaboration with Arizona State University, is pursuing the continuation of their first-place project, Diverting Hate. The Diverting Hate team proposes to:

1. Develop and contribute to the theoretical understanding of Incel ideology by conducting and sharing the results of in-depth research, practical analyses, and marketing tests to practitioners, researchers, academics, and the broader preventing targeted violence and terrorism community.
2. Disrupt Incel radicalization on-ramps within Twitter by surfacing alternative pathways to community group partners using targeted ads via user behavior, key terms, and network analysis.

Arizona State University received a TVTP award in FY2020 and FY2021

The Carter Center

$557,102.00

Drawing on extensive international experience, The Carter Center will work in partnership with Root Change to establish three citizen-led social labs for depolarization and violence prevention in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. These bipartisan labs will develop innovative, community-driven strategies that will identify risk factors for antisocial behavior, radicalization, and violence in select counties; form teams to devise and test solution strategies; and, through the process, improve local trust, collaboration, and accountability. Each lab will include approximately 50 participants, including, for example, grassroots activists, civic groups, non-profit service providers, local employers, school personnel, and faith leaders. The labs will provide bipartisan grassroots input and support to community-based targeted violence and terrorism prevention efforts and serve as a transferrable community model that could be scaled nationwide.

International Center for Religion and Diplomacy

$750,000.00

The purpose of SPARC is to inculcate resilience against the spread of disinformation and its divisive effects by making faith actors a part of the solution. SPARC proposes pilots in the Pacific NW, a region identified to be the most uniquely affected in terms of rising white supremacist threats and violent extremism. 10 initial churches will be the focus of the program, and the lessons learned will directly inform future programming that can be scaled out to include other faith communities in Portland and across the country. Moonshot will provide insight on specific trends around disinformation and the spread of violence inciting narratives which will be used to design the capacity building workshops. Through the application of dynamic trends around disinformation in shaping the religious engagement of communities with their faith leaders, ICRD expects to develop societal resilience which is antifragile and transcends beyond mere fact checking. With the collation of data from the four pilot capacity building workshops, and community-engagement activities, ICRD aims to scale the application of societal resilience, where target communities are able to evaluate the meaning of religious disinformation for their future.