Child Focus and several partner countries and organisations hosted the final conference of the European SafeOnline Initiative on Thursday to raise parents' awareness about children's online activity.
The European initiative is a follow-up to the Flemish Safe Online initiative, developed in 2007 by Child Focus and the Flemish Family Association (Gezinsbond), and has since organised more than 1,500 training sessions for parents.
Professionals and organisations shared insights into online media use and explored how to guide parents and safeguard children from the dangers of the internet and social media. To facilitate future participation in the programme, the European SafeOnline Initiative has developed a training demo and toolkit which can be found at europeansafeonline.eu or veiligonline.be.
Much broader approach needed
"We want to expand our project abroad, which is not that easy in some local contexts," Director of Prevention and Development at Child Focus, Nel Broothaers, stated. "There are many challenges to successfully teaching people about digital parenting."
The Director explained how needs have changed since 2007, when a few information evenings on the risks of e-mail use and public chatrooms were held. "Today, we need to take a much broader approach and additionally inform people about social media, privacy, cyberbullying and other risks, and the internet and sexuality in general."
With children using the internet and social media more frequently and from a younger age, the need to roll out such initiatives in a larger number of countries is becoming increasingly urgent, Broothaers said. "Our expertise in digital parenting is being picked up in other countries and we are particularly proud of that."
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"Thanks to European funding we can meet the demand, but in the long run national structural funding is an absolute must if we are to continue the work of the European SafeOnline Initiative and continue to educate parents on child safety in a virtual environment."
The final conference of the three-year project discussed the project and shared best practices with with eight partner organisations from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania. The partner organisations include the Family Federation and Mediawise, as well as organisations from abroad.
