We are teaching students, parents and teachers about the dangers of giving out personal information on the internet as well as raising awareness of how paedophiles find and exploit children.What we thought would be a small project, that two or three of us could manage, has ballooned into a massive campaign!
We have already trained the teachers from every government school in Pattaya, how to implement an internet safety program in their school. This was done with the participation of City Hall and local schools and as a result over eleven thousand students are safer online! We plan to continue promoting this campaign in internet cafe’s and international schools.
On the 17th, October, 2012, a team from the Hand to Hand Foundation were invited to the Garden International School to educate the students about how to stay safe online. All of the students from Grades 5-13 were presented with some very thought provoking information about privacy on the internet and how to protect themselves from this information becoming public.
The delicate subjects of cyber bullying and sexting were raised with the older classes (Grades 7-13) through real life case studies so that the students could understand the serious consequences of these activities.
The younger students (Grade 5 and 6) played lots of games to help them remember the tips about how to stay safe online. These include Zip It! (keep your information private), Block It! (block messages that are not kind) and Flag It! (tell someone if you feel threatened on line).
All the students received a sticker with the campaign logo ‘Think before you click!’ to help them remember all they had learned on the day.
This was followed by an hour long meeting with the staff at the school to explain the message that had been presented to the students throughout the day and also make them aware of some internet safety issues that students may face.
Preceding this event the Hand to Hand Foundation team had an opportunity to talk to the parents of the school about internet safety. The purpose of this was to highlight some of the dangers that their children might face whilst using the internet and how to safeguard them from these.