More progress and impact from our grantees
Marie Collins Foundation - They are launching an online resource with global reach, to enable those working in child protection to improve their service response and support development of national infrastructures to better respond to the needs of children harmed online and upskill safeguarding professionals in priority countries. The foundation has adapted the 'Click: Path to Protection' programme to meet the needs of professionals outside the UK, and now has 30 accredited ‘Click’ trainers in Vietnam and Namibia rolling out the key messages and supporting professional development.
Middlesex University - Their "Invisible risks: Combating secondary trauma to safeguard children” project will explore and quantify the issues facing content moderators, identify coping strategies and highlight what works. Results will be used to develop and pilot an intervention to support content moderators.They have co-created a Theory of Change model for content moderators identifying resources and activities needed to effectively support content moderators and the appropriate outputs, outcomes and impacts. This has been shared with experts from 8 companies across Europe, India and South America.
World Vision Vietnam - The Tackling Online Child Sexual Exploitation (TOCSE) Project: WVI-Vietnam has made significant contribution to online violence prevention at four levels, including the individual (children), the societal (parents, teachers, community members, and services), the ICT industry, and the systemic (the accountability of government leaders and policies) levels. In its 3.5 years of implementation in three districts of Danang City, over 18,000 children aged 12-18 years have been equipped with skills to protect themselves from online sexual exploitation and abuse, and over 11000 parents and community members educated about risks of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Tech Matters - Tech Matters is helping global child helplines triple the numbers of children they help each year. By building Aselo, a modern, open source contact center platform, we will enable children and youth to reach out to helplines via voice, as well as the text-based channels they use most. The project also simplifies reporting CSAM to national portals and law enforcement. Aselo launched in both Zambia and South Africa last year, and is now operational in 7 countries with plans to launch in 5 more countries this year. Helplines using Aselo have assisted over 17,000 children.
The Palestinian Center for Democracy & Conflict Resolution (PCDCR) - The Safe Online Environment for Children project has achieved unique results of child protection online in the West Bank, Palestine through non-traditional awareness tools, capacity building, empowerment workshops, and media study (first of its kind). The children, parents, CBOs, government & non-government stakeholders are targeted and involved. A strategic plan to protect children from online violence especially sexual exploitation and abuse is adopted by the Ministry of Social Development with the involvement of 375 children, 322 parents, 140 CBO representatives, 49 members of Child Protection Network, 84 school counselors, & 64 multi-stakeholders (representatives from ministries & NGOs)
Child Rescue Coalition - Their Project NEMESIS is a technology to tackle “application-based” offenders and “live streaming” child sexual abuse. In the last one year, the CRC Nemesis Technology has disrupted 4 Child Sex Trafficking Networks (CSTs); led to the arrest of traffickers and buyers and rescued 36 children. IT has also identified over 35,000 CSAM images; over 1.5 million CSAM videos and 8 million unique usernames of CSAM criminals.
Protect Children - The ReDirection project aims to prevent sexual violence against children online. Protect Children has produced new research on online crimes of sexual violence against children anD developed the ReDirection Self-Help Program for individuals who use child sexual abuse material. Over 17,300 individuals searching for CSAM have answered the ReDirection surveys, providing invaluable insight into the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of CSAM users. With this new information, we are in a better position to keep children safe online.
Justice and Care - The “Understanding Traffickers and Pathways to Offending” is undertaking analysis and recommendations to better detect, deter, and prevent Online Sexual Exploitation of Children (OSEC) in the Philippines. The research focuses on the Philippines, a global epicentre of live-streaming OSEC. The outputs of the project will contribute to understanding the drivers of and vulnerability to OSEC in other countries of the Global South with similar contexts. In the three months of the project's initiation, a key achievement has been to assemble a novel data set on convicted OSEC offenders in the Philippines by piecing together scant and dispersed information through contacting local prison authorities, researchers, and experts.
Red PaPaz - In 2020, Red PaPaz launched in Colombia the first Spanish-speaking Safer Internet Center in Latin America, “Viguías”, that has four components: the hotline Te Protejo, Research and Awareness Center focused on the production of investigations on child online safety, Tú Lideras, a network of youth initiatives, and the helpline Te Guio. On February 17th, 2022 Red PaPa held the 8th International Meeting for the management and prevention of online abuse and sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, Connected to Protect Them 2022 (Conectados para Protegerlos 2022). It was an opportunity to learn what different actors, both Currently, Red PaPaz is working on the development of Te Guio, a program focused on preventing aggression before it happens, and on building our network of youth initiatives, whose members will be trained in the safe, responsible and constructive use of ICTs and the Internet, as well as in leadership skills, advocacy and active citizenship.
Population Foundation of India - The SnehAI chatbot, a digital companion to empower and protect youth, was developed by Population Foundation of India to expand knowledge among adolescents on online abuse, exploitation, significance of consent and digital safety to equip them with information and resources to identify and protect themselves from online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.the chatbot for young people with engaging content on topics such as bullying, harassment, grooming, etc. The chatbot was launched in April 2022 and has, since then received 2733 users who have exchanged more than 45,000 messages over 4300 sessions
DeafKidz International - DK Defenders-our innovative, deaf led, early intervention, educational games empowering deaf children to stay safe from abuse and exploitation online. The games use only gestures, body language and facial expression. Piloting on 600 deaf children through a school based model begins in May in South Africa and Pakistan. Digital educational game resource developed and completed with critical input/testing by 30 deaf children in Pakistan and South Africa. We are launching a pilot of the resource in May reaching 300 deaf children in both countries. Full results/data collection and impact evaluation will be ready in autumn. Digital educational game resource developed and completed with critical input/testing by 30 deaf children in Pakistan and South Africa. A pilot of the resource will be launched in May in both countries.
ECPAT International - The "Child sexual exploitation and abuse online: Survivors’ Perspectives” is a multi-country research project undertaken through a partnership of the WeProtect Global Alliance, ECPAT International and six of its network member organisations and conceived to centre the perspectives of survivors on the availability, quality and effectiveness of support services for survivors of child sexual exploitation and abuse online. 36 young women and 6 men between the ages of 18-23 participated in ‘survivor conversations’ - an ethical, careful and participant-centered approach to talking about this sensitive topic. A total of 413 frontline social support workers were surveyed.
Universidad de los Andes (in Partnership with Programa Aulas en Paz) - Through support from the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund, Universidad de los Andes in partnership with Programa Aulas en Paz is using artificial intelligence strategies and tools to study the language and patterns of interactions between potential and current offenders of online child sexual exploitation and abuse and current or potential victims of such violence. With those results, researchers will explore strategies designed to mitigate such abuse, such as parental mediation and industry-created and deployed protection tools. As a result, the study’s findings will be used to develop artificial intelligence tools to analyze interaction patterns between aggressors and victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse. These strategies, which will be designed for adaptability across contexts, will then be channeled to law enforcement agencies in the region. The project has developed a set of criteria that can be used to facilitate CSEA data collection processes for report hotlines and Government institutions. This helped complete the data collection with one of the sources of information. At this moment the information is being fed into the servers to start its analysis. It has also managed to establish a clinical protocol that monitors and gives support to the teams that carry out this process.
UNICEF South Africa - The Enhancing Child Online Safety Programme is aimed at protecting children from violence and exploitation in all settings and builds on UNICEF's continued efforts to support coordinated national responses to online sexual exploitation and abuse of children using the WePROTECT Global Alliance Model National Response as a guide to drive national action. The Programme will build on UNICEF's work under the Global Partnership to End Violence and complement strategies under the INSPIRE framework to end violence against children. The main objective of the Programme is to enhance the national and community-based protective frameworks, through a whole-of-society approach, to prevent, mitigate, and effectively respond to the OCSEA. The key achievement of the project was the development of the training tool kit for the social service professionals, educators and the caregivers nationally, further implemented by training 249 social workers. Additionally, 203 educators were also capacitated on their sector toolkit and they were able to cascade the training in the provinces thus empowering more educators.
Technological University Dublin, Ireland - Their N-Light project is an innovative artificial intelligence application to uncover patterns of online behaviour of perpetrators of child abuse and exploitation through child sexual abuse material from national hotline and child support services. It is enabling important agencies in the child protection field to work together, using the power of AI.
None in Three - The None in Three ‘Emilio’ project, consists of team members based at several institutions in Brazil and the United Kingdom. They are developing a culturally relevant, interactive computer game, informed by research, aimed at preventing online child sexual exploitation and abuse among young people in Brazil. So far, None in Three have completed qualitative research with 67 boys/young men from Brasilia and Londrina (Brazil) to investigate their attitudes and opinions regarding online child sexual abuse and more specifically behaviours around ‘sexting’. This, alongside desk research, has provided the foundations for the game intervention.