PROTECT – Together to save children
Project period: September 2020 – September 2022
Target group: Youngsters between the ages of 9 and 16, and youth workers.
Coordinator: Goldsmiths’ College (UK)
Partners of the project: Pistes Solidaires (France), Besiktas Municipality (Turkey), C.I.P. Citizens in Power (Cyprus), Arena i Swiat (Poland).
Website: see the website
The context:
According to the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), 30% of Europeans between the ages of 9 and 16 talk online to people they have never met in person. This project aims at preventing child sexual exploitation (CSE) by training youth workers in sexual education, youth manipulation and violence.
The objectives of the project are:
– To create a Toolkit with theory and good practices to raise awareness and to train current and future youth workers (or any kind of professional) in this topic.
– To encourage the participation in one of the three proposed trainings to 12 French youth workers. These theoretical trainings will take place in France, Cyprus and Turkey.
The results:
This project has contributed to training youth workers in developing skills to understand a wide range of overlapping topics such as sexual abuse of minors, the exposure to violence, the exposure to drug trafficking and the phenomenon of gangs. The Protect Project Toolkit has been created for youth workers to provide them with information and resources related to these issues. The toolkit contains the following resource sections:
- Community, youth and exclusion
- Child protection and children’s rights
- Online abuse (including cyberbullying and child sexual exploitation) and the mental health impacts of online abuse