Last week, the SCN team led consultation activities with member cities and local stakeholders in Kosovo and Macedonia.

Following an engagement and training phase that led more than 40 municipalities across the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) to join the SCN, we are now seeking to deepen our engagement and support local infrastructure and capacity building initiatives in selected partner municipalities.

As a first step, a thorough understanding of the local contexts, activity to date, and existing or planned programming across the region is central. In addition to discussing with Mayor Mytaher Haskuka of Prizren and Mayor Visar Ganiu of Cair (Skopje) their respective specific challenges in preventing violent extremism, the SCN team also received briefings and coordination updates on national efforts from the CT and CVE National Coordinators in Kosovo and Macedonia.

Finally, recognising the central role of practitioners, civil society actors and project implementers, the SCN team met with local and international organisations to discuss their current and future projects in the area of PVE (ICITAP, Democracy Lab, Konica Institute, CIVIL, OSCE, and Search for Common Ground). This activity underlines an exciting period of SCN development in the Western Balkans, engaging a significant membership in a critical region.