Title of the Activity: Safe Internet, safe generation. entry in virtual world !!!
Type of the Activity:
(seminar, workshop, direct action, film screening…)
Presentation-seminar
Organisation: Future in Our Hands Youth NGO
Project coordinated by: Arpi Harutyunyan
Country: Armenia
City/town: Yerevan
School: Avetisyan
Time frame: February 12
Problem description/needs assessment:
We organized a presentation-seminar for 12-13- year old children as we thought that in Armenia the children are not informed about online hate speech, yet they confront it very often and don’t know how to react. It is the age, when Armenian children start actively using social networks but are not ready for that, as in schools they are not told how to behave in Internet and parents don’t complete that omission (parents are not used to speak about internet and its dangers with children).
Aim of the activity:
The aim is to inform children about:
• What is discrimination, hate, hate speech?
• What is the aim of no hate speech movement?
• Which groups of people are more often discriminated?
• Historical review about gender discrimination, discrimination against emigrants, Muslims, disabled people, ethnic minorities (such as Roma people, Qurds).
• Bullying/ cyberbullying: the notion, the consequences, examples, the tools how to combat it.
• Some rules for internet safety for children.
Objectives of the activity:
We prepared power point presentation (in Armenian) with facts, many illustrative photos and some videos (social advertising, real cases). This attitude was new for children, so they were really excited and (Open to know something new, to think, to discuss as they rarely do such things during their classes). The seminar was organized in interactive way. They were given possibility to speak, to share their own experience, and to play a little simulation game concerning cyberbullying. The attitude was that children could find answers themselves so we gave them space to think, to analyze and after hearing their opinion we developed the ideas together and only after that I made my corrections and additions.
Target group (direct and indirect, numbers, profiles):
11-12 -year- old 40 children
Main results: Children were really interested and involved in the process. Thought most of the topics were new for them, they were very active (more than we expected), gave many-many questions, their eyes were “shining” and it was visible that the subject touched their hearts.
In the third class we had run out of time and couldn’t finish the seminar: they had another important lesson. I couldn’t describe my surprise, when after the classes finished, the whole class (except for 2-3 guys only) came back, so we could finish the topic:
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