On February 9, the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre, co-ordinated by ARC Fund, announced officially the start of the pan-European campaign “Think B4 U Post” at a round table in the Press club of the Bulgarian News Agency, co-organized jointly with Microsoft Bulgaria and the State Agency for Child Protection.
The co-ordinator of the Safer Internet Centre Mr. Georgi Apostolov opened the event quoting the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Mrs. Vivian Reding, patron of the Safer Internet Day: “The overall traffic on social networking sites has grown enormously over the last three years. Therefore, it is even more our responsibility as Europeans to make the online world a safe and secure environment that everyone can enjoy.”
The Chairperson of the State Agency for Child Protection (SACP) Mrs. Nadya Shabani addressed the participants. She stated that SACP is the state institution which is responsible for the children’s best interests and therefore is deeply concerned about children’s safety in Internet. Mrs. This is why SACP will always support and be involved in all campaigns and activities aimed at children and parents in order to raise their awareness about online safety and proper internet conduct, Mrs. Shabani said.
In his speech the Managing Director of Microsoft Bulgaria Mr. Ognian Kiryakov pointed out at the active participation of the company in campaigns and developing of various information materials to the cause of ensuring safer internet environment for children. He presented the video-clip “The man who knows everything” of the Bulgarian finalists in the pan-European competition for Data Protection Day supported by Microsoft – 14 year-old Damyan Dobrev and 17 year-old Vladimir Dobrev from Silistra. Mr. Kiryakov announced alarming data from the last European survey conducted by Microsoft that 57% of youngsters say that they are aware of the fact that sharing personal data in blogs and social networks is not safe, but in spite of that 44% give out their personal information online and every eighth posts his home address.
Children from the Children Council of the State Agency for Child Protection shared their concern about unsafe online conduct on the part of their peers and proposed stricter control on social networking sites.
The Director of the ICT in Education Directorate of the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth Mr. Orlin Kuzov said that the Education Ministry are aware of the need to modernize the school education by including more e-content but opposed the idea proposed by Mr. Apostolov to start IT education from primary school with an emphasis on online safety.
Mr. Apostolov announced the initiatives and activities that are going to be implemented in Bulgaria within the framework of the campaign “Think B4 U Post!”:
– Pan-European quiz-competition for Safer Internet Day www.sid2010quiz.org for students 9-15 years old.
– Pan-European competition for posters for children 5-8 years old.
– Invitation to all Bulgarian TV channels to start broadcasting the video-clip of the campaign. The video-clip is going to be shown on the screens at Sofia metro stations and audio-spot will be prepared and distributed to radio stations.
– The three mobile operators Mobiltel, GLOBUL and Vivacom started sending SMSs for Safer Internet Day to their private customers who browsed via mobile in the last year. The previous year more than 2.5 million SMSs were sent. They will include in their corporative sites special pages about the campaign with tips for children and parents related with safer internet use.
– With the help from the Safer Internet Centre a brochure for parents “The Kid and the Mobile Phone” will be prepared to be distributed through the mobile operators’ shops and in the schools.
– On 25-26 February a team of experts from the Safer Internet Centre is visiting the city of Varna at the invitation of the municipality to conduct two-day training for educators on the methodology of the educational course “Real and Virtual Violence Prevention through Interactive Education in Schools”.
– A series of open lessons on safe online conduct for children and parents will be organised in schools.
– A working group of representatives of social networking sites under the co-ordination of the Safer Internet Centre is starting developing a set of safety standards based on the European Principles for Safe Social Networking. Based on these standards rating of social networks and dating sites will be conducted and the sites fulfilling the standards will be awarded a “Safety Mark” from the Safer Internet Centre. Their list will be published on the Centre’s website as well as a list of sites with unsatisfying and poor standards for minors’ online protection.
