Countering Violent Extremism in the Philippines through Targeted, Networked, and Effective Initiatives

The mission of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) is to help U.S. diplomats anticipate, prevent, and respond to conflicts that undermine U.S. interests or national security. CSO accomplishes this with sophisticated analysis and data visualization, strategic and operational planning capability, civilian operational surge capability, targeted programming, and diplomatic efforts to identify, understand, and address critical conflicts. CSO announces an open competition for organizations interested in submitting applications for a program addressing violent extremism (VE) in the Philippines. The goal of the program is to reduce drivers of VE and increase community resilience in targeted areas where VEO recruitment and radicalization to violence has taken place. To achieve this goal, the program seeks to increase the capacity of a small set of targeted LGUs and local community NGOs to understand and mitigate factors contributing to violent extremist messaging and recruiting within specific vulnerable segments of local populations. These targeted LGUs and local community NGOs will be from Basilan, Maguindanao, and Zamboanga. The target localities and the beneficiaries within those localities will be identified through close coordination between the program implementer, CSO, and the U.S. Embassy in Manila. After identifying target localities and beneficiary LGUs and local community NGOs, the program will train and equip those beneficiaries to assess the CVE related needs, vulnerabilities and resiliencies of specific vulnerable population segments of their localities' populations- and then to design, resource, and manage programs to address those specific needs.