P2P: Challenging Extremism Together

Three teams of international students won a recent competition by the U.S. State Department for their projects to counter the narratives of violent extremists. The P2P (Peer to Peer): Challenging Extremism initiative is a semester-long exchange program organized by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs that connects university students and global publics in dialogue about the dangerous rhetoric and actions of extremists. The winning projects (from first place to third) were: From Apathy to Empathy, a social media advocacy campaign designed by students from Lahore University of Management Sciences; Let’s Talk, an interactive digital community for at-risk youth designed by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; and Faces4Heritage, an online campaign to raise awareness about the destruction of heritage designed by students at Università della Svizzera Italiana in Switzerland.