ZUBAIR QURESHI
Under the ‘SAFE Internet and Outreach Programme’ the Idara-eTaleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), in collaboration with Telenor Pakistan on Sunday launched DigiWorld Campaign with an aim to educate the children of Pakistan on the safe use of Internet. The campaign’s purpose is to promote Child Online Protection and safe online behaviour of children through creating awareness and building capacity in online protection. Besides, it would sensitize and enhance the capacity of project staff, teachers, and students on child online protection. In a statement issued by ITA it has been asserted that through this project the relevant government departments and stakeholders will be more sensitized and mobilized on the importance of child online protection and take up of tools to address it. The ‘SAFE Internet and Outreach Programme’ is working since the past 3 years in the country and this new campaign would continue from April 20 to May 20. The campaign strategy consists of a game ‘Be Smart Use Heart’ that includes 6 main areas of Online Safety such as cyberbullying and trolling, and hate speech and fake news, privacy and information security, cyber security and fraud, reporting, health and well being It has been further stated that the programme aims to educate approximately 175,000 children (between the age of 9-15years) and 11,500 teachers in Public and Private schools across all provinces of Pakistan. For this purpose, training sessions conducted in Schools (Online training sessions in online schools during this time of lockdown). In the first week of the campaign they were sensitized on was plannedas Cyberbullying/ Trolling. While the second week scheduled as hate speech and fake news as it defined as a speech which attacks a person or group based on attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. It is important to be wary of posts online that may be examples of hate speech and avoid liking and sharing offensive information. Often a post online is mistaken as a harmless joke and may be shared on social media, but it is important to think about the consequences of spreading information from organizations that incite hatred and in some cases violence against certain groups. Similarly, the other two weeks are planned to highlight the privacy and information security, the cyber security and fraud, cat fishing, hacker and reporting.
