Online safety for children and young people is a global priority for ChildFund Australia. Today is Safer Internet Day sand this year’s theme is ‘Together for a Safer Internet’. In 2022, ChildFund worked with local partners to launch a global online child safety campaign.
As part of this campaign, ChildFund wrote a new interactive SwipeSafe training package for young people, parents, and professionals in Asia who are grappling with online risks.
Fifteen-year-old Hien (pictured left) from Vietnam is one of 33,000 young people in Vietnam who’ve taken part in the SwipeSafe training.
After taking part in the SwipeSafe training, Hien went on to take part in the ASEAN-ICT Forum about child protection online in November 2022.
“In terms of knowledge, I am confident in what I know,” said Hien.
It is vital that children and young people know how to stay safe online. Being online brings a wealth of opportunity such as access to education, communicating with friends and loved ones, exploring new information, interests, and ideas.
With the onset of COVID-19, more and more children and young people were relying on the internet to socialise with their peers and learn online. This put them at a higher risk of Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA) and other forms of online child exploitation.
Because of the SwipeSafe training, more children and young people like Hien can feel safe using the internet – and reap all the benefits that the online world has to offer. The training will now be rolled out across Southeast Asia and the Pacific in 2023.
“Since the internet is permanent, harmful content will always exist and it impacts young people who accidentally encounter it, so it is necessary to have the participation of moderators to remove this type of content,” said Hien.
ChildFund has been working across the Asia region for more than 70 years to protect children from all forms of violence.
Learn more about ChildFund’s SwipeSafe program.
While most children drive or walk to school, children in one rural community in Cambodia travel by boat. Most of the time this trip is a fun time for the children to chat to their friends. But when it’s stormy, the trip can be scary and unsafe.
Nine-year-old Dav (pictured left) started school last year. She said: “I am learning to swim, and I feel terrified when there is rain, large waves and storms.”
Children can either travel by rowboat or motorboat to school. The motorboat costs about $7.50USD per month for a child to travel to and from the mainland on school days – a cost that most families can’t afford.
When Dav was just three years old, her father passed away, leaving her mother to raise eight children. Together with Dav’s siblings, her mother makes about $7 USD a day working on a nearby farm. The whole family relies on this income for food, shelter and education.
Dav’s mother Sopheap said, “During the rainy season I am distracted, and my mind is with my children journeying home from the school by boat during a storm.
In 2021 Dav received a scholarship from a ChildFund Cambodia education program for her to go to school. ChildFund also provided lifejackets for Dav and her peers so that they can get to school safely.
“But now that they have the life jackets, I feel more comfortable and can focus more on my work. I’m glad to see that my kids will float in water and that they can swim – just in case there is a boat disaster,” said Sopheap.
Sopheap dreams of seeing all her children being able to read, write, and understand math so that they can have a better life than she had. “When I was a child, my siblings and I did not attend school. We had to help my parents generate an income to survive. It makes me sad that some people can’t read, myself included. Listening to my children read makes me happy, and I have started to learn from them,” said Sopheap.
“I prefer to go to school instead of staying at home because I have more friends there and because I want to be educated so that I can have a good job when I grow up,” said Dav.
ChildFund also built a new library with tablets that have reading and math apps, a child-friendly playground, toilet block, and upskilled teachers to better support vulnerable children so that all children can access a quality education.
Learn more about ChildFund Cambodia.
