Spain’s San Pablo CEU University wins the second joint Facebook and OSCE #UnitedCVE Peer to Peer competition

VIENNA, 27 June 2017 - A team of students from the San Pablo CEU University of Spain was today awarded the first prize in a regional competition organized by the OSCE United in Countering Violent Extremism (#UnitedCVE) campaign as part of the Peer to Peer (P2P): Facebook Global Digital Challenge.

Of the universities that joined the challenge during the Spring Semester 2017, three top student teams from Spain, Germany and Czech Republic were short-listed to pitch their campaigns live in front of a jury of OSCE senior officials and ambassadors of participating States during the Annual Security Review Conference in Vienna.

Under the #Rewind hashtag, the winning team developed a communications campaign to address bullying and hateful comments online. The initiative is aimed at equipping the silent majority of internet users with simple tools to speak up against hate online, thus turning them into ‘Rewinders’.

“Joining this competition and putting on track such an ambitious project was a huge commitment for us. However knowing that as part of our studies we created something with the potential to have a real social impact is extremely rewarding,” said Laura Garcia, member of the Rewind campaign team of the San Pablo CEU University.

The final and the award ceremony were organized by the Austrian OSCE Chairmanship, the Permanent Missions of France and Serbia to the OSCE, Facebook, the consultancy EdVenture Partners, and the OSCE Transnational Threats Department, under the umbrella of the OSCE #UnitedCVE campaign. 

This is the second competition for universities across the OSCE region to have taken place as part of the #UnitedCVE campaign. In the Autumn Semester of 2016 the first regional Peer to Peer OSCE #UnitedCVE competition was held on the margins of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg.

Every semester the Peer to Peer (P2P) Facebook Global Digital Challenge invites university students from around the world to design, pilot, implement, and measure the success of a social or digital initiative, product, or tool to counter hate and violent extremism.