Safer Internet Day

Protegeles - Safer Internet Spain

PROTEGELES is a non-profit organisation founded in the year 2002, although our hotline against child sexual abuse images has been working since October 2001. Our work mainly focused on the following objectives:

To provide the Spanish Law Enforcement Agencies (Policía Nacional and Guardia Civil) with as many reports of illegal content on internet as possible so that they can erradicate child sexual abused image on the web as well as locate and prosecute their authors.

PROTEGELES' way of working has proven to be extremely effective. In this sense, Protegeles receives every year a formal letter from the Spanish National Police regarding the operations they began during the year basing on reports they received from Protegeles. A total of 83 operations were opened during 2010 as a result of our reports and we are( still waiting  for the results of 2011).

• To carry our awareness campaigns and preventive work directed at improving the safety of children and young people in the use of online technologies.

• Running helplines that work via email, instant messaging, telephone and face to face meetings in order to provide young people and their families free, specialized and personalized assistance on behavioural disorders related to harmful internet content, contact or conduct.

• Engaging Youth on the safer and responsible use of the online technologies, running 16 Youth Panels across Spain with 240 youngsters participating in awareness raising and educational activities and playing a role of a multiplier stakeholder in their school communities.

Safer Internet Day 2013

This SID 2013 you can follow our celebration by following in streaming I Youth Congress meeting Youth Panels from across Spain.

Additionally, PROTEGELES has created 16 permanent Youth Panels, composed by 240 youngsters from 12 to 15 years old from across Spain.

This net provides our organization the opportunity to better understand how young people address safety issues, their perceptions of risks, their opinion about the materials to be launched, etc.

Work on the "rights and responsibilities online" means convey to children three basic concepts: 

1. All children have a range of rights that must be respected, also in internet. They have the right not to be bothered, insulted or harassed by other users. They have the right to communicate and also to have fun. On the other side, they are entitled to receive information, and to have content suited to their age, and we can say that Web 2.0 has generated new possibilities involving the right to produce information, express themselves and to generate content. Now they are protagonists of the Internet, and not just passive consumers.
   
2. Children have a responsibility for the way they use the internet. The misuse, neglected or careless, in which they don´t take into account the basic safety standards, may cause consequences on their lives that they could have avoided.
   
3. All children are responsible to respect and enforce the rights of the others. Not starring in harassment, threats or insults to other users. Not consuming content in which degrades, humiliates or disparage others, and respecting the copyright´s rights and intellectual property of the content generated by other people.

Many children are unaware of their rights online, and they are not trained enough to say NO and to rebel in a situation unfair. And also, some of them unknown the consequences for the others or which are the legal implications for themselves or their families.