Safe City Norway Kick-off

Categories: New initiatives
Udgivet: 11 Sep - 2020

Preventing Extremism Locally

Ten Norwegian Cities Leading the way

On August 25th we assembled all 10 Norwegian member cities, +20 sparring partners and leading experts from academia, private-sector and civil society for 8 hours of Covid-19 friendly online workshops. The high-level participants from the cities engaged in sparring sessions with each other and external partners, and further developed concepts for local initiatives to prevent extremist violence and hate. Over the next two months the Norwegian cities will continue to improve the local concepts in dialogue with the Nordic Safe Cities team and through ‘pitstops’ where the cities meet, spare and exchange practice.

Gjensidige Foundation allocates 10 million to prevent extremism

Earlier this year, the Norwegian Gjensidige Foundation and Nordic Safe Cities jointly initiated Safe City Norway (Trygg By Norge) to promote initiatives that can create safe cities through the prevention of extremist hatred and violence. It is the ambition that the collaboration in 2020 and 2021 will lead to new and groundbreaking concepts that are developed and implemented in 10 Norwegian cities, and hopefully are so inspiring and effective that they can be scaled and replicated in more cities in Norway and across of the Nordic countries


 

 

“We are proud to launch our new initiative. It is the ambition that the initiative, in cooperation with the Nordic Safe Cities Alliance, will lead to new, solid efforts in Norwegian cities that enable local communities to promote open and safe cities and prevent hate, violence, and extremism.”

Ingrid Tollånes, The Director of Gifts at Gjensidigestiftelse

Ten cities taking action to create a safer Norway

The 10 cities are all members of the Nordic Safe Cities Alliance and comprise the capital city of Oslo as well as Bærum, Arendal, Fredrikstad, Haugesund, Larvik, Kristiansand, Sarpsborg, Skien and Stavanger. The cities point out that current developments emphasize the need for more action and better cooperation at the local level; Polarization is growing, us-and-them logic prevails, hate speech and the normalization of extreme statements are spurred by the increasing digitalization and spill into the offline sphere as well.

The cities have identified four areas for which they are developing new concepts. These are:

1 / 4 — A CITY WITHOUT HATE

New local initiatives and methods to create a city for all, with a focus on enhancing senior target groups’ understanding of mis- and disinformation and on preventing extremist hate speech among adults online.

In the coming 2 months, the Norwegian cities will continue to develop the local concepts with support from each other, external sparring partners and the Nordic Safe Cities team.

 

We look forward to share and spread the good initiatives from our Norwegian member cities. To read more about their current action to prevent extremism and create safer societies, click the button below.

Read more here