The P2P: Facebook Global Digital Challenge is a joint initiative with EdVenture Partners that seeks to engage university students around the world in competitions where students create social media campaigns and offline strategies to challenge hateful and extremist narratives. This is a biannual competition that runs during the fall and spring college semesters.
Over the course of one academic term, teams of university students work with advisors to research a designated peer group audience and design a strategy to best reach those peers. Online and real-world strategies are employed to develop connections with others and produce measurable results.
Teams receive a cash budget and Facebook ad credits to implement their campaign. The top three teams are flown to either Washington, D.C. in the United States or Brussels, Belgium in Europe to compete for prizes.
School: University of Dhaka
Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tagline: #SpreadPositivity
POSITIVE BANGLADESH is a social startup that offers the youth a platform to engage in creative activities and nurture positive thinking. In short term, the youth engage with their communities, setting the grounds for tolerance and coexistence, and provide them a sense of purpose and belonging, while transforming them into passionate individuals and agents for countering religious extremism and social stereotypes in the long run.
"The youth are often overwhelmed with energy to invest. The absence of the right outlet makes them susceptible to negative distraction. We fail to perceive the danger lower level of engagements poses; as it naturally creates isolation and social communication disorder, they become vulnerable to manipulation."
Dr. Mekhala Sarkar, Associate Professor Dept. of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health
School: Izmir University of Economics
Location: Turkey
ÇOCUK GIBI BAK is a social responsibility project intended to protect the futures of 1.7 million children refugees in Turkey by enlisting the compassionate support of university students, aged 18-25.
Through community partnerships and events, they emphasize the need for refugee children to feel accepted and encouraged in order to thrive happily into adulthood.
Çocuk Gibi Bak conducted 60 in-depth interviews and secured 10 community partnerships as a result of their efforts to engage their peers on this issue.
School: KU Leuven
Location: Belgium
BONDING BEYOND BORDERS is an offline-online campaign to counter intolerance and prevent discrimination from developing amongst 12-30 year olds. Through interactive and fun card games, students develop a genuine understanding of each other’s daily situation. The card game, supported by digital content via our website, tells the stories of very different people. The game challenges students to get to know their unknowns, driving home the point that the better we know each other, the more we accept each other. This campaign took place in Belgium and Madrid, Spain.
Bonding Beyond Borders conducted in-depth interviews, online game surveys, and drew on existing research to develop their strategy of targeting teachers and professors from secondary schools and higher education.
"My experience with the game is that it is a very educational game. The students realize they have many prejudices and these prejudices are tackled throughout the game."
Teacher on Bonding Beyond Borders
FALL
Design Akademie
Berlin, Germany
Don’t Be Silent
SPRING
University of Dhaka
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Think Twice, Act Wise
FALL
Notre Dame University
Beirut, Lebanon
ACT
SPRING
Laal-u-Anar Foundation
Afghanistan
Islam Says No to Extremism
FALL
Turku School of Economics
Turku, Finland
Choose Your Future
EdVenture Partners (EVP) is an organization dedicated to developing innovative industry-education partnership programs. These experiential learning opportunities provide hands-on, real-world experience to students in addition to providing social impact and community outreach opportunities at colleges, universities, and high schools. EVP has designed and managed programs at over 800 schools in North America and internationally.