ARI - Youth for Diversity - ID Religious extremism cases have increased rapidly for the past two years, eroded diversity and pluralism values which is part of  Indonesia#s fundamental ideology and specifically affected religious minorities, LGBT community, and unmarried sexually active people.In Fact, not only adults, but religious extremism has affected youth#s lives and shaped their ideology.  Recent credible survey on the perception of young Muslim by INVID stated that 22.2% agreed that violence is a right way to treat #kafir# (a derogatory term for non-muslims). In February 2018, hundreds of religious school students in West Lombok took the street to resist LGBT community. Collaborative research of Monash University, Islamic Walisongo Unversity of Semarang, and the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta, in February 2018. found there are many schools in East Java that is potential to develop religious extremism.
As a youth-led organization, ARI believes in diversity, gender equality, and universal human rights that have been our concern. We believe it is crucial to equipped youth, especially young activists such as ARI#s members or other youth organization, with adequate knowledge and capacity onreligious extremism and strategy to tackle it and gain bigger force and impact.  To address that ARI general objective for this program is to improve the capacity of youth (age 15 -24) in two cities in Indonesia so they can be the agents of change to suppress religious extremism. Therefore ARI specific objectives are:

1.       Strengthening the capacity of selected  ARI members on the understanding of religious extremism and how to tackle it
2.       Developing a support mechanism and tools to enable young activists to empower other youth in suppressing religious extremism
3.       Raise awareness and build a network to gain support from other youth and prominent religious figures/leaders

To achieve these objectives, ARI will implement activities which target youth in West Lombok and Pati, where there are many religious schools and cases of youth engage in religious extremism were found. Those two areas are also home of ARI local chapters and have been intervened by ARI before for another issues such as meaningful youth participation (MYP). Those two areas also have similarities such as religious leaders hold a very strong position in the community and are based of many religious schools.

First, ARI will conduct training of trainers that will capacitate ARI members. ARI members become the targetof this training because they have been capacitated in other key interests such as meaningful-youth participation, advocacy, genderequality, etc, that will benefit the next activity that is developing module and booklet on extremism. We want this module#s materials to be comprehensive,gender sensitized and feasible for youth to implement. After the module is finished, we will conduct the E-learning Sessions that will be participated by young activists from ARI and other youth organizations or community with various background, especially those are the most vulnerable like an interfaith forum or transgender community.  Next, we will continue with networking dialogue between capacitated young activists to discuss the next activity (roadshow of raising awareness campaign in religious schools) and another opportunity to work together. Lastly, we will share this report in level to the Ministry of Religious Affairsand other prominent religious groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama to explain our best practices and module in hopes they will adopt or replicate it.