Building A Culture of Internet Safety and Security – An International Youth Cyber Project

Building A Culture of Internet Safety and Security – An International Youth Cyber Project 

The East West Institute USA in partnership with Alliance for Youth Movement United Kingdom is working with Youngstars Foundation and other organizations across the world to generate recommendations for world leaders on the urgent need to foster a culture of internet safety and security especially among young peoples of the world.

One of the major trends in our world today is the internet! From social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to search engines like Google and Ask, on a daily basis more people are using the internet especially in Africa and developing countries where mobile telephone is bridging the digital divide. There is no gainsaying the fact that the internet is affecting our lives in many positive developmental ways, but what about the negative impact it is silently having on especially young people in Africa. In 2010 President Obama had to make a public statement to school children in America about the dangers that the internet poses and advocated for caution. It is against this and other background that this initiative is working to foster a culture of cyber safety and security especially among young people. In pursuing this objective, recommendations from around the world is being collated for presentation to a high delegation of world leaders in UK on 1^st June 2011. Subsequently selected youth organizations or activists from Nigeria who contributed towards Nigeria’s recommendation shall participate in other activities including physically attending a larger all expense paid conference in India.  Youngstars growing use of its social media website has been identified as one of the youth groups to submit recommendation to the high delegation meeting.

How You can Get Involved

Youth organizations or youth activists in Nigeria can conduct a 4-5 hours youth group discussion in their community on young people’s use of the internet and submit the report to Youngstars on or before May 12^th 2011 to contribute to the recommendation of Youngstars to the high delegation in June 2011.

Format for group discussion

• The discussion group can be formal or informal as long as there are atleast 15 people in the meeting aged between 18 to 30years of age.
• It could hold in a car garage, a hall, a classroom, a living room, an open space etc, what you need is space for people to seat and interact freely.
• The meeting should have opening welcome, an introduction presentation on the internet, then depending on the number of persons in your meeting, you can break into 3 or more groups to discuss different topics and report back to the group. The program agenda has been designed and shall be sent to you once you register to conduct a group meeting.
• A questionnaire shall be administered at the end of the meeting and all recommendations from each group shall be sent to Youngstars.

Other basic information

• Each group must submit an attendance sheet with names, email address and phone numbers
• Each group must snap and submit 5 publish-able digital photo pictures to show different aspects of their meeting.
• Each group must submit the questionnaires they administered as well as their key recommendations to Youngstars via email on or before May 14^th, 2011.
• A video recording of the meeting should also be submitted from which we shall package a documentary of all the activities conducted in Nigeria for possible viewing in the UK meeting.
• You are free to hold more than 1 group meeting targeting different groups if you can achieve it and submit your report before the May 14^th 2011 deadline.

Important Information

There is a standard agenda and topics for discussion which all groups must use for their meeting to ensure uniformity and accuracy of recommendation. Please contact Youngstars Foundation for the agenda to conduct your meeting. Note that only report from those who use this agenda shall be accepted and considered for future involvement.

Financial Support

Financial assistance between the sum of N5,000 to N7,500 ($35 to $50) only is available for those who need such assistance to cover writing materials, photo copy, video coverage or any other logistics. To access this support, a formal request stating what the assistance is needed for should be sent to Youngstars 4 days before the day of your event.

To indicate interest

Send an email to engage@youngstars-foundation.org or ystar27@yahoo.com or call Emmanuel Idika through 0703 5535 876. For more details visit www.youngstars-foundation.org