Communities play a central role in the prevention of extremism and radicalisation and their
engagement and empowerment needs to be reinforced and supported as a matter of priority and in
a sustainable manner. Their engagement can be direct or complementary to the efforts of
governments and public authorities. Communities can challenge those who seek to radicalise others
or can provide support to affected community members. They can also be a wealth of knowledge
when it comes to people at risk of radicalisation. This approach can take different forms, such as
community policing, but can also include empowering key people within the community to stand up
against violent extremism.

Community engagement and empowerment are still confronted with a series of challenges, in
particular lack trust and confidence in the government, police and public authorities, but also the
lack of support from authorities for innovative approaches. The literature has also outlined the
challenges of generating trust and balancing intelligence gathering with trust building. At the same
time, a series of initiatives have set out to tackle these issues and their lessons learned are
presented here. Similar to other issue areas, community engagement and empowerment to combat
radicalisation and violent extremism should not be seen in isolation from the broader issue of
community engagement and empowerment in general. Here, research has already testified to the
vulnerability of immigrant and minority groups, the barriers to their participation and more broadly
the likelihood of newcomers to experience disadvantage. From a different perspective, it is
important to ensure the provision of social and educational services for all and depending on their
needs, and not just to certain groups of society identified through ethnicity.

Engaging with communities in many cases will also go hand in hand with family engagement. Therefore the community’s chapter closely mirrors that of engaging with families and the two should be read in tandem.

This chapter briefly states the aims of community engagement and empowerment and some of the
methods used to implement them. Therefore, it lists and elaborates on a series of lessons learned
before focusing on two special areas of activity: community policing and the involvement of
religious leaders. The chapter draws on literature relevant to this topic as well as interviews with
the projects managers of the following initiatives: Intercultural and Diversity Office – Ethnic Liaison
Officers (Ireland); Miteinander – Organisational platform combining different approaches
(Germany); and Monitoring Hate Crime against Roma with mentors (Czech Republic).