Insafe Weekly Update

The next Insafe/INHOPE joint training meeting will take place on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 April 2024 in Warsaw, Poland. The meeting will start at 13:00 on Wednesday 17 April and will finish at 17:00 on Thursday 18 April. There will be some optional activities taking place on the morning of Wednesday – a Media Literacy in the Classroom session and also a visit to the Polish helpline. The Insafe Steering Committee meeting will take place on the morning of Friday, 19 April 2024.

All those who have registered will receive a copy of the training booklet and final agenda in the coming weeks. If you haven’t yet registered but are planning to attend, please get in touch with Karl as soon as possible. For any questions or further information on any aspect of the training meeting, please contact Karl. 

As usual, there will be a resource competition taking place as part of the upcoming training meeting. As this is a joint Insafe/INHOPE training meeting, all EC co-funded SICs and INHOPE hotlines are welcome to take part in the competition with the chance of winning €5,000 which must be used to make the resource accessible to the wider network. Typically, the funds would be used for translation and/or adaptation.   

The resource could be a video, brochure, book, research report, learning materials – anything that would be of interest and use to the wider network. The focus of this edition of the resource competition will be on children and young people aged 12 to 18. SICs and hotlines are invited to submit any resource which targets or is aimed at this particular group.   

Those wishing to take part should submit an entry using this short online form. Please remember that each country can only submit one resource. If you are unsure if a particular resource will fit the requirements, please contact Karl or Annarita to discuss.  

Please find below an outline of the upcoming deadlines related to the resource competition:

Many thanks to those people who joined the meeting last week. A short report is available from the BIK community (login first) along with a link to the recording of the meeting. 

The next meeting of the helpline early warning group will take place on Tuesday, 23 April 2024 at 11:00 CEST. Use this link to join the meeting; for further information, please contact Karl.

An online meeting will take place on Thursday, 25 April 2024 to launch a good practice guide which focuses on evidence-based awareness campaigning. The meeting is scheduled to start at 11:00 CEST with a tentative finish time of 12:30 CEST; however, the full time may not be needed. Use this link to join. Please note that there will be further information shared here once the guide is published, but please save the date in the meantime. For further information, please contact Karl. 

Please note, this item relates to INHOPE work delivered under the BIK Phase 5 project.

What is happening in online child protection? 2023 marked a year of rapid growth and progress for the INHOPE network. Driven by the vision of a digital world free from child sexual abuse material (CSAM), INHOPE remained proactive in countering emerging threats, enhancing its technological infrastructure, and supporting hotline analysts around the world. The INHOPE Annual Report 2023 presents insights from 54 hotlines around the world processing reports of CSAM. 

Join INHOPE's Kalina Zografska and Abby Roberts on Thursday, 20 March 2024 at 16:00 CET for this exclusive webinar that will take you through the key data and trends from 2023, and discover more about how INHOPE has been working with key stakeholders to improve the safety of young people online.

Find out more and register via the INHOPE website. 

A reminder that a new #MediaSmartOnline campaign launched on 8 March 2024 in three European countries: Czech Republic, Ireland, and Poland. The campaign aims to raise awareness about all the media literacy actions and initiatives that are currently available for children and young people, and those who are working to upskill them (parents and caregivers, teachers and educators). It is rolled out in cooperation with the Insafe network of Safer Internet Centres and the Media & Learning Association.  

The campaign is first undergoing a pilot test phase in these three European countries, and will then scale for full roll-out next year, but SICs are already encouraged to use and disseminate the campaign's resources and messages. 

Discover more about the campaign on the BIK portal. 

Is there a particular media literacy initiative that you would like to be featured in the campaign? Please contact Annarita.  

A new BIK MOOC (massive open online course) launches today, Monday, 11 March 2024, for approximately 4 weeks. This course provides background information and understanding of key initiatives that are shaping the digital experiences of children and young people. It also explores how teachers and schools can help to protect and promote children's rights in a digital world, how education can empower children and young people with the necessary skills and competences for the Digital Decade, and methods to encourage all youth to actively participate in shaping a better and safer internet.

The course is targeted at primary and secondary school teachers of any subject. Other educational professionals and stakeholders, such as heads of schools, school support staff, and policymakers with an interest in this topic are also welcome to join.

Enrolment is still possible: find out more via the European Schoolnet Academy.

The next edition of the BIK bulletin will be published at the end of March with a focus on the global celebration of Safer Internet Day (SID) 2024, the latest developments with the Digital Services Act (DSA), and two new campaigns: AdWiseOnline - focusing on consumer and youth protection (see also above), and MediaSmartOnline - focusing on media literacy. As always, we also invite Safer Internet Centres (and their partners) to contribute with general articles on news, resources or events. The content deadline is COB today - Monday, 11 March 2024 (or sooner if possible) and all contributions or queries should be addressed to content@betterinternetforkids.eu.

• New podcast on digital parenting for Safer Internet Day 2024 in Belgium (SIC BE)
• New campaign #MediaSmartOnline launches today

Remember to submit your public portal blog articles to the BIK content mailbox; they count towards your SIC’s lump sum mechanism (LSM) criteria.

Helpline community of practice

• Online meeting on DSA with the European Commission 1 March 2024
• Early warning group - report from meeting on 6 March 2024

We hope that you are enjoying exploring the BIK platform. Please note, a BIK user guide is available to download from the BIK community (login first). In case of questions or issues when using any aspect of the BIK platform, please contact us using the contact link in the top right navigation area or email support@betterinternetforkids.eu.

IMPORTANT – if you have new starters who need to register for the platform, please direct them to www.betterinternetforkids.eu/register, in parallel with sending an email to support@betterinternetforkids.eu so that we can verify them and provide further instructions.

• Better Internet for Kids (BIK) public portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu; #BIK; #BIKbulletin
• New BIK strategy (BIK+) on BIK portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/newbikstrategy; #BIKplus
• Safer Internet Forum (SIF) on BIK portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/sif;#SIF2023; #SIF2024, #SaferInternetForum
• BIK Policy Map on BIK portal:
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/bikmap; #BIKPolicyMap
• Safer Internet Day (SID) minisite:
  www.saferinternetday.org; #SID2024; #SID2025; #SaferInternetDay
• Positive Online Content (POCC) minisite:
  www.positiveonlinecontentforkids.eu; #positivecontent; #PositiveOnlineContent; #POCC
• BIK Youth minisite:
  www.bikyouth.eu; #BIKyouth; #Pledge2Youth
• Child and youth consumer protection campaign (launched on Safer Internet Day 2024):
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/adwiseonline; #AdWiseOnline
• Media literacy campaign (launched in March 2024):
  www.betterinternetforkids.eu/mediasmartonline; #MediaSmartOnline
• Project Facebook profiles:
  Insafe, Safer Internet Day, Insafe network closed Facebook group, INHOPE
• Project X (formerly Twitter) profiles:
  @insafenetwork; @safeinternetday; @BIK_youth; @inhope_pr
• Project LinkedIn profile:
  Better Internet for Kids