We look forward to seeing many of you in Brussels this week, and many more of you online. By now, you should have received various emails with detailed information depending on the different meetings and activities you are involved in. If you have any questions about the plans for the week, please get in touch.

For those SIC colleagues who are chaperoning young people, you should also have received an email by now setting out the detailed Youth Panel agenda for the week.

Safer Internet Forum
We look forward to many of you joining us on Thursday for the hybrid edition of Safer Internet Forum 2024. 

• Onsite participants are reminded that the event takes place at the nhow Brussels Bloom hotel (Rue Royale – Koningsstraat, 250, 1210 Brussels, Belgium). Registration opens at 08:00 CET and the Forum will commence promptly at 09:00 CET. All registered onsite participants will receive a further mailing later today containing the full agenda and speaker bios.
• Online participants  All registered online participants will receive a further mailing tomorrow or Wednesday containing the full agenda and speaker bios, and detailed instructions on how to connect to the online meeting environment.

We realise it is a busy week of activities, so please do not hesitate to contact us via info@betterinternetforkids.eu if you should have any queries. We will also monitor that email address throughout the week for any ‘on-the-spot’ issues and will attempt to respond to any queries as quickly as we can.

Just a reminder that from Q4, helplines will be able to categorise the number of contacts relating to the VLOPs and VLOSEs when submitting their data. We recognise that not all helplines are able to collect this information, but those that are will be able to share this information via the assessment platform in the usual way from the beginning of 2025. For further information, please contact Karl.

Many thanks to those who attended the online meeting for helplines, which focused on working with young volunteers, and special thanks to colleagues from six helplines who shared their expertise. A report summarising the discussions is now available from the BIK community (login first). There is also a link to a recording of the meeting. For further information, pleasecontact Karl. 

Following the success of the helpline early warning meetings, the temporary working group which was set up to look at how best to share public concerns and possible trends and emerging issues, decided that an early warning meeting for awareness centres would be useful. These meetings will take place every six weeks and will providean opportunity to share any current challenges in your country, any new research that has been published, and any new and emerging trends. The first meeting will take place on Tuesday, 7 January 2025 at 14:00 CET; use this link to join the meeting. All colleagues are welcome regardless of whether you have anything to share. For further information, please contact Karl.

There will be an online meeting at 10:00 CET on Thursday, 28 November 2024 which will focus on gamer needs in a toxic online gaming landscape.OuassimaBelmoussi from the Dutch helpline will share her latest research into thisimportant area. Please use this link to join; contact Karl for further information. 

The next helpline early warning group meeting will take place on Friday, 6December 2024 at 11:00 CET; use this link to join the meeting. For further information, please contact Karl.

The next edition of the BIK bulletin will be published in mid-December with a focus on the outcomes of Safer Internet Forum (SIF) 2024. We’ll also be looking ahead to the new AdWiseOnline campaign (launching in January), Safer Internet Day (SID) 2025 and, as is typical for this time of year, we hope to include a few festive tips too. 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 on Wednesday, 4 December 2024 (and sooner if possible). All contributions or queries should be addressed to content@betterinternetforkids.eu.

As a reminder, we generally suggest that articles should be 300 - 600 words in length (but longer focus pieces are fine too), along with copyright-cleared images/photographs/logos if appropriate. The BIK team reserves the right to edit contributions for house style etc., but we try to keep this to a minimum.

A kind reminder that we are now accepting SIC article submissions following the launch of the new BIK platform. Please contact the BIK content mailbox with any submissions or in case of any queries. Recently published articles include:

• International Day of Tolerance
• Monkey see, monkey do: Don’t believe everything on the net! (SIC LU)

Many of you now have access to the new BIK community. Please feel free to explore the various tools and resources, and start contributing to community of practice (CoP) discussions.

In case of questions, please email support@betterinternetforkids.eu.

Please note the updated URLs for the new BIK platform:

• Better Internet for Kids (BIK) on the new public platform:
  better-internet-for-kids. europa.eu; #BIK; #BIKbulletin
• BIK strategy (BIK+) on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/bik/bik-plus-strategy; #BIKplus
• Safer Internet Forum (SIF) on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/sif; #SIF2024, #SaferInternetForum
• BIK Knowledge hub on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/knowledge-hub; #BIKPolicyMap
• BIK Youth on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/bik-youth; #BIKyouth; #Pledge2Youth
• Safer Internet Day (SID) on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/saferinternetday; #SID2025; #SaferInternetDay
• Media literacy campaign on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/media-smart-online; #MediaSmartOnline
• Child and youth consumer protection campaign on the new BIK platform:
  better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu/en/adwiseonline; #AdWiseOnline
• 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