Technology Partners Foundation (TPF) has joined BTL-COP (Building Trust and Leadership to challenge global aporophobic crime in a police Community of Practice), a €3 million Horizon Europe project coordinated by the University of Greenwich. Professor Dr Rafael Popper, Director of the Centre for Foresight and Internationalisation (CFI-Poland), leads the TPF team and is responsible for several core workstreams.
BTL-COP aims to protect vulnerable people and build safer, more inclusive communities across Europe by strengthening social learning, trust and leadership between police and communities. The project addresses aporophobia, defined as hostility towards people experiencing poverty, and combines trust-building technologies with foresight-informed policy tools.
The consortium brings together 11 partners from the UK, Ireland, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Poland and Portugal, spanning police authorities, judicial actors, academic institutions, youth organisations and training providers. At its heart is the Trust in Neighbourhood Groups (TING) model, proposed by Professor Jill Jameson, which supports sustained, honest dialogue and shared intelligence in communities of practice.
TPF leadership and responsibilities include:
- Collaborative BondMate co-design: Co-creating a user-centred multi-alert wearable (BondMate) through stakeholder workshops in Madrid and Valencia with individuals with lived experience, community organisations and emergency responders, in collaboration with La Salle Barcelona, Valencia Police and the Metropolitan Police. Outputs include a BondMate pretotype and design guidelines.
- Leadership programme upgrade: Developing a Trust-building and Leadership Safe Spaces Toolkit with partners including the University of Greenwich and the University of Coimbra, and aligning with existing police training frameworks. Content covers mediation, aporophobia and establishing TING communities of practice for local contexts.
- Dissemination and community building: Designing and delivering an integrated strategy that defines audiences, messages, channels and an events calendar, and mobilising partners to share results across conferences, policy forums and professional networks.
- Digital and multimedia engagement: Supporting selected activities, including brand and website set-up in collaboration with partners, coordinating content planning for social channels, contributing to partner-led newsletters and press releases, and promoting open-access dissemination where appropriate.
- Evidence-driven policy blueprint: Working with STEMwise to synthesise findings from pilots and evaluations into actionable policy roadmaps for local, national and EU levels, to be discussed with policymakers at the final event.
- Sustainability and long-term impact: Securing follow-on funding and support for the technologies and platforms developed, including BondMate and the Security Helix platform, and embedding models and curricula within police training and community networks.
BTL-COP is scheduled to start in October 2025. For more information, please see the University of Greenwich press release.
