Tens of millions of youths around the world learn how to use ICT every year but Internet safety is not always explained in a way that engages young people.

Young leaders in secondary school don’t always have extraordinary opportunities to give back to their communities and learn new leadership, digital, team and job skills.

Safe Connects offers three programs that develop young leaders and promote Internet safety:

Media partnerships. An initiative where students work with the media and have scripted and starred in 36 Internet safety public service announcements (PSAs) carried on television and watched by approximately 500,000 individuals (example- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXV1la7geqQ&ab).

Community partnerships. Over 500 students (60% women) have learned videography skills during nine six-week programs and produced over 350 voice-of-youth Internet safety and other videos. The videos have been hosted on numerous websites and have been viewed many 100,000s of times (example-https://youtu.be/Uyog-5w8H-s).

School partnerships. Using Safe Connects media and training materials, secondary school students guided by their teachers customize their Internet safety program and conduct in-school Internet safety training presentations at primary schools. 95% receiving the safety training recommended it to their friends.

We’ve also worked extensively with the media to promote Internet safety and digital inclusion awareness.

https://www.safeconnects.org

• Argentina
• Australia
• Canada
• India
• South Africa
• United States of America

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• People with disabilities
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Refugees and internally displaced people
• Remote and rural communities

Safe Connects is a highly replicable end-to-end media and training program used by schools, NGOs, and ICT centers. Depending upon which partnership model is used, it is easy to setup and deploy and has low or no barriers to entry. All curricula and resources are free and online. Materials can be modified by organizations for their specific use or be used as is.

Media partnerships. The NGO-school-media partnership methodology and narrative in our PSAs can be used to expedite launch of this program.

Community partnerships. All that is needed to conduct a videography program is a cellphone’s camera, our online training materials and an NGO or school to lead.

School partnerships. Our safety training materials and curricula are online for use by any school or NGO. Some schools invite parents to the in-school presentations. Tips for parents to discuss Internet safety with their family are here (https://www.netliteracy.org/safe-connects/collateral-material/).

Net Literacy, an NGO that presented to the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development in September 2012 as a digital literacy good practice example provides guidance and responds to questions about the Safe Connects program by email. Safe Connects program research and outcomes are here (https://www.netliteracy.org/safe-connects/survey-results/).

The Safe Connects program launched 14 years ago and is a sustainable initiative. It is easy to set up and maintain because the curriculum has already been developed, is available online and can be customized to meet a school’s or NGO’s requirements. Developing partnerships with the media, schools, government and NGOs significantly enhanced sustainability.

Many schools have ongoing responsibilities or requirements to promote Internet safety and believe that Safe Connects offers good citizenship and leadership benefits for their students. School administrators encourage teachers to help mentor the students and typically offer Safe Connects as part of a school club or as an afterschool program.

Students are ready to present at school assemblies with 60 minutes of practice. Students enjoy volunteering to learn how to produce videos or teach younger classmates and typically continue volunteering until they graduate. 95% of the students receiving Safe Connects training recommending it to their friends and this also encourages schools to sustain the program.

Many NGOs’ missions include increasing the digital literacy and helping their stakeholders thrive in the 21st century. This program reflected very favorably on the media which ended up funding us so that we could partner together in other new initiatives.

Safe Connects helps bridge the digital divide and promotes the WSIS values of access to information and knowledge, capacity building, cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content and especially media. Safe Connects promotes equality, solidarity and shared responsibility because all materials and services are provided free of charge and in an inclusive manner. It ensures that safety education is holistically integrated into teaching ICT literacy and teaches young people the digital skills needed for life and to understand, participate actively in and benefit fully from the Information Society and the knowledge economy. It promotes volunteering and giving back to the community. Through its many partnerships between schools, media companies and NGOs, Safe Connects has been a sustainable and capacity building program since 2008. The web-based content is translatable into 104 diverse languages which makes it accessible to a larger population. Safe Connects is one of seven of Net Literacy’s digital inclusion and digital literacy initiatives. We have visited Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa to meet with NGOs and share digital inclusion and digital literacy problems and solutions. The Safe Connects program had an especially close partnership with the media and provided students volunteers the opportunity to work with the media and have their Internet safety scripts be produced into public service announcements and then carried on television. We also worked with the broadcasters and the press to create awareness about Internet safety and digital inclusion.