NEWS / EVENTS: Non-formal education week (ROMANIA)

Every year in Romania, the Ministry of Education dedicates one week in April to non-formal and extracurricular educational activities. All institutions, teachers and pupils are encouraged to participate in a range of diverse cultural actions.

The Safer Internet Centre (SIC) in Romania, and the country-wide network of active youth panellists, will take this as an opportunity to teach children and teachers about online safety issues. This is why, this year, in all 13 cities with active youth panels, informative sessions will be held in schools between 7-11 April. Most activities will use non-formal techniques in order to stimulate children and teachers’ participation in creating a safer and better online environment, both for them and their community. Besides activities in schools, some of the youth panellists have decided to organise flash mobs, followed by informative sessions in visible public places in their city.

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Safer Internet Day 2014

AWARDS: European Award for Best Content for Kids

The European Award for Best Content for Kids has now been launched Europe-wide, with the aim of highlighting existing quality content for 4 to12-year-old children and encouraging the production of new content that will offer young people online opportunities to learn, play, discover and invent. It is organised by the European Commission with the support of Insafe.

The award aims to collect creative examples of positive content for children and young people. Adults can compete in two categories creating content for children up to 12 years, while young people can also design content for peers up to 18 years of age. The competition will run in most EU member states and also in Iceland, Norway and Russia during 2013.

National winners will be put forward to a European-level competition and winners will be announced on Safer Internet Day, Tuesday 11 February 2014, at an awards ceremony in Brussels. The award represents a great opportunity for European content producers to showcase their work to a wide audience, and to contribute to a better internet for children. We are looking forward to many inspirational competition entries. Be creative, think positive - and participate!

Visit the award website for further information or view the full press release here.

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EVENTS: 7th International Conference ‘Keeping Children and Young People Safe Online’

You are invited to attend the 7th International Conference 'Keeping Children and Young People Safe Online', which will take place at the Novotel Warsaw Airport Hotel, 1 Sierpnia 1 Street, on 18-19 September 2013. The conference is organised by the Polish and German Safer Internet Centres, which work together within the European Commission's Safer Internet Programme. The main partner of the event is the Orange Foundation.

The Warsaw conference will bring together approximately 500 representatives from the education sector, NGOs, law enforcement, government and industry. The event will address a wide variety of issues relating to children's and young people's safety online, such as privacy in social networking sites, managing online identity, educational strategies and emerging trends online.

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NEWS: Safer Internet Day 2012 celebrated in Albania

TIRANA, 7 February 2012 - Safer Internet Day 2012 brought together the Albanian Minister of Innovation and Technology, mobile operators, parents, teachers, civil society and NGOs in an attempt to increase child safety on line with concrete measures.

The Ministry of Innovation recently started an awareness campaign (1-17 February 2012) in order to build a strong commitment around this issue. During his speech, Minister Pollo highlighted the need to adopt the best European practices and sign an ICT Code of Ethics. "We should offer the Albanian children a possibility to report cases of abuse while they use the Internet."

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ARTICLES: David Cameron: Safer Internet Day 'is a personal priority'

David Cameron has lent his support to Safer Internet Day, saying making sure parents are empowered enough to ensure their children’s safety online is a “personal priority” of his.

T he Prime Minister said: “It never ceases to amaze me how quickly children grasp new technology, cracking it instinctively to hunt down their favourite website. As a parent it can be daunting to keep up, and worrying to know that alongside the fun, games and educational sites there are dangers they need to be protected from.

“Safer Internet Day aims to address these concerns by empowering parents, helping them to understand the problems then arming them with the right tools to keep their children safe online. Getting this right is a personal priority for me. It's important to have a joined up approach across the industry to ensure the information parents need get through effectively.”

full article from "The Telegraph"

ARTICLES: The young and the restless

While teens happily barrel along the information highway, parents are setting up a few roadblocks.

Children aged eight to 18 seem to be surgically attached to their phones these days, absorbed in a digital world far removed from physical boundaries, and often parental ones too. But parents are getting increasingly concerned, and clued up, about thevirtual playgrounds their children are frequenting.

Heather Hansen, who runs educational workshops on Internet safety at Teenworx, says while children have the digital world at their fingertips, they don't necessarily know how to use it. “We're asked to go into schools and sometimes children as young as Grade Four (nine to 10 years old) have access to BlackBerrys, which is stressful for them because they have all this technology and aren't sure what to do with it.”

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EVENTS: Student playwriting competition marks Safer Internet Day 2012 (BULGARIA)

The Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre (SIC) team has developed two lessons introducing the theme to the children: to motivate and help them think about various possible situations, which are resolved by co-operation between a child and an adult, and to provide them with a simple guide on how to develop a scenario. The prizes are smartphones from the Mobiltel mobile operator, multimedia sets from Microsoft Bulgaria, and a challenging experience together.

The Bulgarian SIC have already received about 40 scenarios from children of different ages and schools all over the country. The topic of connecting generations has been developed into various creative ideas. The children organised themselves and worked in teams together with their teachers and parents. Most of the topics are related to online risks. Initial observations are that most of the children are sensitive to the existing dangers online. A lot of the stories in the elaborated scenarios have a positive outcome: this shows children's belief in a safer online world.

The three best scenarios will be chosen by a jury and the winners will work with professional theatre directors to prepare themselves for performing on stage at the national SID 2012 event. The event will be held in a theatre in Sofia and, after a brief press conference, the winners will have their minutes of glory in front of the audience.

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EVENTS: Safer Internet Day 2012 (TURKEY)

At Insafe, we are always happy to hear of the work of third countries (i.e. those outside of the Insafe network of the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway and Russia) in terms of their online safety actions. Here, we learn about a new safer internet service in Turkey… 

The Safer Internet Service project in Turkey has been launched to protect children and youth from harmful content on the internet. It is currently one of the most considerable projects in Turkey and, while developing the service, the regulation requests and complaints of internet users to the Information Technologies and Communication Agency have been taken in consideration. On 28 August 2011, following technical studies with relevant industries “principles and procedures concerning a safer internet service” was determined by the Turkish Information Technologies and Communication Agency.

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NEWS: Digital Agenda: Commission to step up efforts to safeguard children online (EUROPE)

On the occasion of Safer Internet Day 2011, the European Commission today announced that it will step up talks with ICT industry and children's organisations to encourage the design of safer products to help keep children safe online.

Moreover, the Commission will shortly review the 2006 Recommendation on minors and how to protect them in audiovisual media and Internet and on the 2008 Communication on the protection of youngsters from harmful content in video games. Children are going online from a younger age and not just from computers, but also games consoles and mobile phones.

More than 82 % of 15-16 year olds in Europe have a social networking profile, as well as 26 % of 9-10 year olds. Safer Internet Day is being marked today in more than 65 countries around the world under the slogan "Internet is more than a game, it's your life!". This is supported by the EU's Safer Internet Programme, which helps parents and their children to be safe online. Children's safety online is an important part of the Digital Agenda for Europe (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200).

Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda said: “It is hard for parents to ensure their children are always safe online, especially as youngsters now access the Internet not just from PCs, but also via smart phones and games consoles. This places greater responsibility on the ICT industry to provide products and services that protect and empower children online. We have worked productively with social networks and mobile operators. Now we call on the whole chain of ICT industry to work together to do more to safeguard children online."

In response to changing patterns of technology used by youngsters, the Commission will work with new groups and industry-sectors to better protect children online. Manufacturers of mobile devices and game consoles, Internet service providers, social networking companies, mobile applications and content providers, consumer organisations, researchers and childrens' organisations will be invited to join the collaborative platform. This dialogue will build on the achievements of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU (see annex and IP/09/232, IP/10/144) and the European Framework for the Safer Mobile Use by Younger Teenagers and Children (see IP/07/139, IP/09/596, IP/10/704).

A recent pan-European survey shows that children go online more and more and that Internet use is becoming more personalised, with one out of three connecting via their mobile phones and one in four via game consoles. More than half of 13-16 year olds are accessing the Internet in their bedroom.

At the same time, 59% of 9-16 year olds have a social networking profile, with differences between countries ranging from 80% in The Netherlands to 46% in Romania. 26% of them have completely "public" profiles, ranging from 11% in the UK to a high of 54% in Hungary. 14% of children post their address and phone number on their profiles.

Safer Internet Day 2011 aims to remind young people that what they do or say online could break through into their "real" life even if they use an avatar or a nickname. The Safer Internet Day has been organised by INSAFE, the network of Awareness Centres and is supported by the EU's € 55 million Safer Internet Programme. It has taken place every year since 2004, with events in more than 65 countries in Europe and worldwide.

This year, for example, Ireland will launch a research project on children's use of the Internet and Bulgaria will launch a helpline where youngsters, parents and teachers can ask for personalised advice on online safety issues. In France, there will be special workshops in schools during the whole month of February. In Spain, an agreement for joint training sessions for minors at risk and their parents will be signed between the police, Madrid Municipality and several companies. Hungary, Latvia, Greece and The Netherlands will award their national winners of the Best Children's Online Content competition.

For more information:

Safer Internet Day:

http://www.saferinternet.org/web/guest/safer-internet-day

Safer Internet Programme:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/index_en.htm

Concrete tips for parents on how to keep your child safe online

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/projects/centres/practices/index_en.htm

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