Empowering Future Digital Citizens

Here at Rudi International, we like it when Africa takes interest and leadership in matters that affect her own children. This is true even for child safety in this increasingly dangerous digitized world.

From October 25 to 26, 2015 in Cairo, Egypt a group of talented young men and women met under the auspice of the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in conjunction with one of Rudi International’s partner organizations the ITU’s Regional Office for a conference called “ITU Regional Strategy Workshop on Child Online Protection (COP) for the Arab Region: Empowering the future digital citizens.”

According to an article by John Carr, a member of the Executive Board of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety, these future citizens of the digital world discussed several important questions touching the future as well as the very present of the continent.

How do we help parents understand the Internet better so they, in turn, can help their children? How do we help teachers get up to speed and stay up? How do we mobilize the political will and resources to make sure we reach every child and every school, not just those who live in urban areas or in better off neighbourhoods? How do we mobilize the political will and resources to make sure law enforcement have the right tools? What kind of technical measures are available to assist with the project and how well do they work? What can we reasonably expect companies to do voluntarily and what part does regulation play?

At Rudi International, we hold workshops to address several of these issues and are constantly on the look out for policy and Information Technology specialist to present them and discuss them with the young people of Africa through the Rudi For Women and Girls program. This program aims at stopping modern day slavery, bullying, and sexual trafficking of children.