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A Guide For Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation

Last updated:

12/04/2025

Publication Date:

12/09/2023

Content Type:

Tools & Guides

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Chapter 7: Implementation

Once a city has a strategy in place and has identified the approaches that will support its prevention goals on all three levels, it needs to consider how to effectively implement them. A good plan is only a plan until it is put into action, and there are some critical things a city should consider to help ensure its achieves the impact it envisioned and builds a strong foundation that will support its efforts to maintain a resilient and peaceful community well into the future.

The following chapter will explore some key considerations a city should bear in mind when implementing their prevention strategy and pursuing the approaches that will best support its goals and the needs of its residents. While there are many factors that will impact a city’s success, this chapter will focus on three which are critical to success in any context: coordination, capacity and monitoring, evaluation and learning.

Coordination

Given its multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary nature, coordination among different sectors and actors is a prerequisite for effective and sustainable prevention. Operationalising a whole-of-society approach necessitates integrating contributions from a multitude of offices, organisations and individuals. This includes frontline practitioners like social, health and youth workers and teachers; community leaders such as religious, tribal, youth and respected members of community groups; and different government agencies. This applies as much to local as national efforts and includes cooperation between these two levels. Cities should bear this in mind whether they are looking to become involved in prevention for the first time or to deepen and broaden their existing involvement. 

In general, there are a number of modalities for enabling coordination; this includes creating dedicated centres, networks or bodies, or by appointing an

As reflected in the NLC Toolkit (developed by Strong Cities for the Global Counterterrorism Forum), local coordination mechanisms can serve a number of purposes. For example, they can: 

• provide a single point to organise and collate the input and activities of local actors;
• facilitate both implementation of relevant local prevention programmes and coordination with the national government;
• connect local stakeholders – from across government and civil society – to discuss and address issues of concern to local communities and pursue cooperative solutions;
• coordinate information-gathering and sharing to both inform local actors and help ensure local perspectives and needs are communicated to the national level; 
• provide or facilitate the delivery of relevant capacity building that is tailored to relevant front-line workers and community actors; and
• manage and disperse funding for locally-led prevention initiatives.  

Cities should be mindful of the importance of ensuring there is a mechanism in place to enable the sustained involvement of a diversity of local stakeholders in prevention. For many, this is not an issue on which they necessarily feel comfortable working, whether due to a lack of resources or expertise. Cities should recognise the need for some level of cooperation with the national government. 

Local Multi-Stakeholder Coordination Models and Lessons

Some local governments have had success pursuing a coordinated approach in which they develop municipal-led, multi-stakeholder and/or multidisciplinary frameworks or mechanisms for preventing violence, hate and extremism and/or other social harms. These locally-led, multi-stakeholder platforms often involve a diversity of representatives from the community, including religious leaders, educators, social workers, youth workers and law enforcement, as well as representatives of the national government. These bodies can help identify and engage frontline actors across the city in prevention. They also help to build an appropriate and coordinated response to issues of hate and extremism that is both tailored to the local context and in line with national prevention frameworks. 

This approach is sometimes referred to as a ‘local prevention network’ (LPN) and leverages the advantages of multiple actors to support prevention within their existing mandates. The power of LPNs stems in part from their proximity to, and immersion in, the day-to-day issues and challenges prevalent in their communities. This can contribute to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the individual and structural factors that might lead to violence motivated by hate or extremism than if each actor engaged separately. 

The following key learnings were raised by cities consulted in relation to some of the common challenges they experience when trying to expand or develop multi-actor coordination through various local models:

• Everybody supports collaboration in principle but there are always reasons why it is difficult to achieve. These might typically span differences in working cultures and legal limitations around information-sharing or be symptomatic of a more fundamental lack of trust. Cities need to navigate these issues and build understanding around the key concerns each part of the local government has, as well as how varying institutional approaches or professional disciplines will inform different perspectives. Where there are legitimate barriers, for example, legal restrictions around information-sharing or confidentiality, these need to be explained at the outset.
• Building on existing institutional partnerships can give cities a head-start in building the working-level trust and cooperation required to address complex, contentious or sensitive issues.
• Balancing input from police and security actors against contributions from non-security stakeholders, including health and social care professionals, can be difficult, but it is critical. Whether these specific partners are part of a city’s prevention network or are able/willing to come to the table and cooperate with a city will vary from one context to another. 
• Running an inclusive mapping process from the outset that involves all the stakeholders likely to be key in implementation will inform the specific partnership, information-sharing and institutional cooperation challenges in any given city. This is likely to be more useful than building a theoretical list of the various partners and stakeholders that represent an ideal model. (See Chapter 2). 
• Each partner needs to understand the value of the other and appreciate what they are contributing to planning and implementation. Developing working level trust and effective teamwork needs to be part of training and capacity building efforts and not left until it is needed in an emergency response situation. Scenario planning exercises and basic roles and responsibilities need to be agreed upon.

Coordination platforms, which come in different shapes and sizes, have contributed to operationalising a whole-of-society approach to prevention that draws on existing city-level agencies and resources and includes civil society and other community partners. 

Drawing from its wide-ranging experience supporting the development of city-led, multi-stakeholder coordination and engagement platforms, Strong Cities has identified ten lessons for cities interested in developing local coordinating bodies:

1. Design a structure to fit the specific context
2. Identify and articulate a clear remit for the body
3. Tailor the mandate to fit the needs and priorities of the city and the communities it serves 
4. Emphasise local knowledge and context
5. Leverage existing community structures and initiatives
6. Maximise strategic and action planning and resource deployment for prevention
7. Coordinate and/or deliver local programmes aligned with an action plan
8. Enhance coordination with relevant national actors
9. Institutionalise communication and coordination mechanisms with the community
10. Provide safe spaces

Regardless of the approach a local government pursues, it should try to utilise existing departments, policies, positions, programmes and materials wherever possible, rather than disregarding the creations of their predecessors. Prevention must be pursued over the long term and disrupting or ending programmes prematurely can undercut a city’s progress and cause a backlash among those who are directly affected, potentially undermining future efforts. 

Information-sharing

Sharing information quickly, securely and consistently is crucial to successful coordination. To address the challenges of effective information sharing, cities should consider developing protocols and guidelines that can help avoid confusion, bring clarity, provide accountability, reassure partners and build trust between different actors. Information-sharing systems do not need to be costly, complex or technologically advanced platforms. They may not even need to be digital. Regardless of the system a city already has or wants to put in place, these principles apply to support the effective flow of information and ensure that stakeholders use it with a common purpose and understanding.

Here are some tips for Information-sharing systems

1. Train stakeholders not only in how to use the information-sharing system but also in understanding the ethical considerations, data protection regulations, and the wider context. For instance, ensure that their information-sharing systems comply with local, national, and (where applicable) international data protection regulations;
2. Establish a clear purpose for the information-sharing system, e.g. outlining goals, type of information to be shared, and primary users;
3. Direct pertinent information to the engaged civil society stakeholders (if they are authorised to receive such information);
4. Have standardised formats. Different agencies might use different terminologies or data structures, which can hinder effective communication; and 
5. Periodically review and update the information-sharing systems to remain effective and the chain of information required may differ depending on the type of intervention deployed or issue being addressed.

National-Local Cooperation

As a result of its engagements with scores of cities around the world, Strong Cities has found that some level of NLC is needed for cities to unlock their full potential in prevention. At a fundamental level, NLC encompasses the structures, resources and approaches that cohere national strategies with the localised needs of a city’s approach, with both national and local stakeholders able to work collectively and maximise the impact of their respective efforts.

Since its Third Global Summit in 2018, Strong Cities has been at the forefront of efforts not only to highlight the critical role that meaningful NLC plays in operationalising a whole-of-society approach to P/CVE, but to develop practical guidance for national and local stakeholders, including cities. This includes its support for the development of the GCTF’s 13 NLC good practices and an accompanying Implementation Toolkit that provides recommendations, case study examples and other resources that local governments may find helpful to apply and tailor to their own contexts. The toolkit breaks down NLC into six core competencies: Trust; Inclusivity; Coordination; Communication; Capacity; and Sustainability.

Cities are encouraged to refer to the Implementation Toolkit for detailed guidance on each component. Note that the operational and coordination approaches outlined in this toolkit, although developed primarily for the P/CVE field. are applicable and relevant across the wider spectrum of prevention efforts.

Involving the private sector

Private companies generally benefit from a stable and safe environment, yet few actively participate in specific prevention activities, much less at a local or city level.

Companies in every sector can be relevant to prevention, not just the seemingly more influential stakeholders like large multinational tech companies involved in regulatory issues over harmful/hateful content, for example. Many cities felt that beginning with understanding the role that local businesses and employers can play is a more accessible starting place for developing collaboration with the wider public sector.

Cities consulted for this Guide highlighted two primary reasons for engaging the private sector in their approaches: 

As stakeholders actively participating in a city’s approach

Companies can contribute to prevention planning and potentially be part of a local network or multi-stakeholder model (see Institutionalising the Approach in Chapter 3). More broadly, the workplace is also an everyday domain no less vulnerable to risks and challenges than other spaces in a city.

This may necessitate engagement with the private sector in specific interventions and at different levels of prevention. Private companies might, for example, establish processes and support efforts to combat hate, violence, intimidation, discrimination, stigmatisation, exclusion or other challenges in the workplace, whether between colleagues or as part of any external engagement. In some cases, a city may be positioned to support companies by providing basic training and support and raising awareness around key risks as well as the approach and broader principles the city is adopting. 

The potential impact companies stand to make is not limited only to their employees; companies can also be vital partners in, for example, providing job support, training and employment and career development opportunities, which might form part of a city’s chosen approach. 

As resource partners 

Cities might also turn to the private sector for resources – financial, human, material, facilities, and/or expertise – that can support their prevention approach. This may be a significant or a more modest contribution, but in either case, demonstrating investment in, and partnership with, the private sector can help make a stronger case for continued public investment too. For more on public-private partnerships, see Sustained Resourcing in Chapter 3.

Another area in which cities can potentially attract investment in prevention approaches is by accessing corporate social responsibility or equivalent schemes that many companies develop. Demonstrating how the private sector can support community work that creates a general social good, or how local employers and businesses can ‘give back’ to the community is an important first step. Some companies may also recognise the ‘business case’ for prevention, where safer and more cohesive communities support better commercial outcomes as well as social ones.

Training and capacity-building

Prevention is best achieved through a whole-of-society approach in which different actors can play their part effectively in support of the city’s plan or policy. This may require upskilling different actors through training and resources, especially for those whose role does not explicitly deal with preventing hate and extremism or who do not otherwise have any experience with it.

To get the most out of their team and other contributing stakeholders, the city should identify specialised expertise and provide access to training and resources that help enhance their familiarity with hate, extremism and related threats to public safety, local democracy and social cohesion and understanding of how misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy narratives are fuelling them. This can include theoretical background and approaches as well as specific threats facing the city, such as Islamaphobia, anti-migrant, anti-LBGTQI+, anti-Semitic or other forms of hate, anti-establishment sentiments and the local dynamics that might contribute to extremist and hate-motivated violence.

Cities should also focus on the knowledge and skills needed to design, manage and evaluate prevention projects that follow a ‘do-no-harm’ approach. This is equally important for civil society and community actors who may seek support to run programmes in their communities. Training can also enhance familiarity with local and national strategic prevention frameworks and their role in supporting them; processes for reporting and responding to potentially dangerous situations and local government-led communication and engagement with the city’s residents, especially when working with potentially vulnerable individuals. 

Cities should keep in mind the need to ensure that training and other support are made available on an ongoing basis. That way each actor can build relevant skills and knowledge in a sustained way, rather than through single-day sessions, and stay up to date on new developments and approaches. 

Defining training needs

Recognising that specialist training may be needed to equip cities to tackle hate, extremism and polarisation does not necessarily need to ‘exceptionalise’ the topic. Rather, it recognises that while all stakeholders will apply a skillset to tackle any given problem in accordance with their professional background and the responsibilities of their role, there may be some specific gaps that need to be addressed when confronting these particular challenges.

These gaps should all be identified in the context of the responsibilities outlined in a city’s local plan or framework, not just how much or how little a specific individual knows about prevention in general. Many gaps will likely also be identified through the initial mappings, provided that they were comprehensive and inclusive.

General vs specific needs

There will likely be different levels of need for different stakeholders, depending on their professional background, existing competencies and role in the local approach. 

Some examples of training needs expressed by cities include: 

• Awareness raising around what prevention can entail, why cities are relevant and what other cities are doing and have learned;
• Awareness of local threats and familiarisation with national strategy, if relevant; and
• Background understanding related to different ideological aspects of extremism, polarisation and hate and key narratives and vulnerable groups.
• Gender sensitivity training;
• Child protection;
• Domestic violence and coercive behaviour;
• Psycho-social support and individual mentoring;
• Online harms, including understanding conspiracy narratives and mis/disinformation;
• Referral systems, data protection and coordination mechanisms/protocols. 

These examples are intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive, and to demonstrate that cities will have more specific, specialist needs as well as more general gaps in the knowledge and capacities of different stakeholders.

Key Principles for Training and Capacity Building

• Capacity-building programmes should be based on actual needs and tailored to individual stakeholders. These needs should be identified in initial mappings but could potentially require further assessment.
• The programmes should cover a range of topics that are relevant to a stakeholder’s role whether engaging at a community or individual level. This should include practical skill building related to the pursuit of multi-stakeholder models that support project management, communication, MEL and more.
• Training should not be restricted only to ‘hard’ skills. Given the nature of extremism, polarisation and hate and the sensitivity and nuances that need to be understood when engaging on these issues, it should also involve an examination of preconceived notions, unconscious bias and assumptions.
• Although there may be a need to make certain training mandatory, in general all training is usually more effective when participation is voluntary, and the person being trained is invested in its outcomes.
• Where appropriate, local governments should leverage existing international good practices and build on lessons from other cities.
• Training should incorporate, where possible, practical exercises that enable participants to connect knowledge and skills to real-life application. Such approaches should be targeted to address specific issues that stakeholders are likely to encounter, rather than employing a generalised training curriculum. This should include interactive learning tools such as tabletop exercises that test participants’ knowledge and skills and support them to apply them critically.
• Each stakeholder should be considered individually to provide the training they need to play their particular role, and collectively to promote a cooperative approach in which each role reinforces the efforts of the others. 
• Where possible, cities should adapt existing capacity building tools and models to meet prevention needs, rather than creating dedicated curricula from scratch. 
• Local governments should consider opportunities to partner with civil society, private sector and multilateral organisations that specialise in prevention training to fill gaps.
• Cities should invest in ‘train-the-trainer’ models that are scalable and can be adapted to local and hyper-local needs to enhance sustainability and maximise reach.

Note: this advice includes guidance from the NLC Implementation Toolkit

Training providers

In many cases, individual agencies, departments or organisations will be responsible for procuring/delivering training to their own employees. When it comes to addressing some of the particular dynamics of prevention, it may be useful to open training sessions to professionals from different backgrounds (e.g., local/city administration, central government agencies, civil society organisations, faith groups, youth and community centres, sports clubs, etc.) This could be a helpful way to break down institutional barriers and build trust by allowing different actors to share a common experience and offer insights reflecting their different positions.

Specialist professional qualifications and experience will be needed to both develop and deliver effective training curriculums. Most cities will not have these resources in-house; instead, local officials will often work with experts to identify and adapt existing resources or commission new ones that are specifically tailored to support the different stakeholders in their city.

Here are some basic distinctions among types of training provided: 

• In-house training: a professional from within the city administration, maybe following a train-the-trainer programme, can offer the training. 
• External trainer: cities should consider, funding permitted, issuing a call for proposals (or any similar procedure) to select the most qualified trainer, based on specified criteria. If funding is unavailable, they should work with partners, such as civil society organisations, national government and/or the international donor community to identify and procure experts to address capacity gaps. 
• Local government associations: these exist in many countries, with one of their functions often being to organise and/or deliver training activities. The South African Local Government Association, for example, invests in significant learning opportunities for South African cities on violence prevention. For example, it encourages local governments to engage with Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading, which brings cities together with a focus on implementation of interventions in crime hotspots.
• Train-the-Trainer: training for potential instructors that builds their capacity as instructors and as subject-matter experts, enabling them to deliver specialised training. This model is useful for delivering training at scale, when cities or organisations need to train a significant number of professionals and can help enhance sustainability by embedding a training within departments or offices to train new hires and preserve capacity at every level.
• Peer experience: depending on the needs, a city may want to build on what other cities have already learned. Expertise held by other cities might be helpful and can be accessed through Strong Cities and other partners. 

After Strong Cities workshop, representatives from Busia (Kenya) organised a learning visit to the City of Cape Town (South Africa) focused on their recently launched prevention framework and how they have integrated this with their broader crime prevention efforts. In addition, Dialogues for Urban Change has facilitated a partnership between four cities in both South Africa and Germany to share learnings on how urban planning and design can contribute to safety and security.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning

Monitoring, evaluation and learning serves many functions in enabling and sustaining a city’s prevention efforts. By making it possible to demonstrate a strategy or n initiative’s impact, it helps justify continued investment in a city’s prevention efforts and offers a foundation for resource mobilisation. But on a more fundamental level, it allows a city to understand what works so it can take an evidence-based approach to prevention that maximises resources and drives real, sustained change over time.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning frameworks and tools provide a city with the means to determine whether identified objectives are being supported and expected outcomes met, in order to determine the impact interventions are having and how an approach might be altered or improved in light of this information. Cities should develop and follow a process, using results to strengthen the strategic coherence and impact of their overall approach. 

Local governments should also incorporate monitoring, evaluation and learning into their P/CVE programs and support mechanisms to understand and demonstrate impact. Such work can be conducted internally by a specialist employed by the city, or externally by an organisation or consultant. An external evaluation will typically be more highly regarded since an outside evaluator is more likely to approach the process without bias.

Although practical guidance on monitoring, evaluation and training may be more obviously applicable to individual programmes and other activities, it is equally applicable to the coordination mechanisms and specific intervention frameworks that cities already have in place or may want to develop. For both activities and systems, goals should be identified and impact needs to be understood. The steps presented here can be followed regardless of what a city is trying to measure or assess, provided consideration is given to different types of indicators.

There are a number of resources available to inform and guide approaches, including several related to preventing hate, extremism and polarisation. 

The majority are developed with a non-governmental audience in mind to inform project design and measurement of results. Despite often being developed for civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, development contractors and international agencies, much of the technical learning applies equally to developing approaches to city-led prevention. Arguably the emphasis on sustainability, institutionalisation, local ownership and the cycle of incorporating learnings to adjust implementation may take on additional importance for cities where, regardless of resource availability and changes in political direction or broader policy, communities will continue to feel the impact, knock-on effects, or lack of success of prevention efforts in the longer term.

Invest in monitoring, evaluation and learning

Many cities shared that they felt either themselves or partners engaged in local activities had previously treated monitoring, evaluation and learning as an afterthought and merely a technical requirement for funding mechanisms. A key learning expressed by many was the need to invest dedicated time and resources – from design, data collection and analysis to learning – throughout the lifecycle of their prevention interventions. This recognises that monitoring, evaluation and learning efforts can and should influence how cities engage and potentially prompt changes to their approach is critical.

In addition to planning and resource requirements, basic steps such as building in time during activities and follow-up for data collection and carrying out surveys, for example, is also a tangible improvement that cities felt could be made to their approaches. For one of the best-recognised guides to the full process, see the World Bank’s Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System. For guidance tailored to a hate, extremism and polarisation context, see this toolkit from UNDP and International Alert.

Share learnings

Analysing the data collected is not the endline objective in itself. The analysis should not only shed light on whether an initiative is generating impact or are otherwise on-track but should also elicit learnings and other findings that might inform alterations to the approach and improve overall performance. Ensuring that learnings are shared with all involved in order to maintain a feedback loop where results constantly inform practice is essential. 

Beyond this, sharing the learnings and results from a city’s monitoring, evaluation and learning activities with wider audiences, including where possible, community stakeholders and the wider public, also serves the wider aim of increasing transparency, openness and public engagement – all valuable objectives of city-led prevention efforts.

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