UNDP Malaysia collaborated with the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT) in 2021 to design and facilitate capacity-building projects for Malaysian civil society organisations (CSOs) and the media. These projects were centred around building the knowledge and skillsets of the target groups to effectively deliver initiatives aimed at preventing violent extremism, whether via direct interventions or concomitantly, within their respective issue areas that were identified as having the potential to shape the narratives around issues relating to violent extremism. Recognising that CSOs and the media alike are aptly situated, this project aimed to promote the role of CSOs and the media as credible messengers of peace that can amplify the positive voices of Malaysian communities, thus, enhancing the overall levels of social cohesion in the country. 

The project kicked off with a series of roundtable sessions with respective target audiences, in order to get a better understanding of their needs and the challenges currently faced by them. These valuable insights eventually culminated in the development of two specialised handbooks as well as two on-ground capacity-building workshops for both CSOs and the media, respectively.

Understanding the challenges surrounding limited resources, the two handbooks, namely, ‘Handbook for CSOs in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism in Malaysia’ and ‘The Role of the Media in Preventing Violent Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion’, were developed in our efforts to provide a long-term, cost-effective and sustainable method of knowledge dissemination, which can continue to support capacity-building efforts of future PCVE actors.