PARTESS-COM

PARTESS-COM (Participatory Approaches to Protecting Places of Worship, Schools, and Community Centres) is a two-year project co-funded by the European Union under the Internal Security Fund. The project aims to enhance the security of religious communities and educational institutions threatened by increasing societal polarisation, often exploited by extremist or terrorist groups to incite violence.

The project focuses on establishing effective security practices, tools, and solutions, through:

• Developing a digital platform and mobile application for sharing knowledge, enabling multimedia hybrid learning, incident reporting, and fostering stakeholder networking.
• Promoting European-level exchanges on security issues and creating a European database of experts and stakeholders.
• Building a database of incidents, supported by data collected via the app, and assessing recent trends and emerging threats.
• Delivering targeted capacity-building programmes, including simulations and tool demonstrations.
• Conducting an EU-wide security awareness campaign to empower citizens to report and respond to security-related incidents, foster a culture of vigilance, and counter misinformation and disinformation.

This initiative involves a consortium of research institutions, local authorities, civil society organisations, private companies, and interfaith organisations, under the coordination of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP).

The PARTESS-COM project (ISF-2024-TF2-AG-PROTECT) was funded by the European Commission under the Internal Security Fund, under grant agreement No. 101190916. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.