Young people aged between 18 and 29 from all over the country can enroll in a digital citizenship course; Participants will have to engage teenagers and educators and can receive prizes of up to R$ 1500
The Digital Citizen education project, by Safernet Brasil and Meta, opened registrations on June 15th for online training in Digital Citizenship for young people aged 18 to 29. In its third year, the program will have several new features, including five engagement possibilities for young participants, offering until February 2023 awards and grants of up to R$1500.
Cidadão Digital is a program that trains young people in issues of privacy, digital security, well-being on the internet and media education, and accompanies them after the course so that they can carry out free educational activities on the topics with teenagers and educators, mainly from the public network. education. Started in 2020, the program has already impacted more than 126,000 young people and adolescents and 66,000 educators. Last year, the initiative was recognized by the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations, at the World Summit on Information Society Prizes 2021.
In 2022, up to 1000 young people will benefit from the Online Training Course, which will be open from June to February 2023. Young people who complete the Online Training Course by November 29 will be able to register for the next cycles of the program, where they will be challenged to carry out educational activities, either remotely or face-to-face, with 60,000 teenagers and almost 10,000 educators from their regions. Up to 100 young people will benefit from rewards for engaging in the program, including cash bonuses, tablets, virtual book readers and kits for producing digital content. Throughout the cycles, online mentorships will be offered by the program team, which includes Mentors, young people who participated in Digital Citizen in previous years and will share the experience with new participants.
After registering for the training, young people will be able to choose the modules they are most interested in and study on the days and times that best suit their routines. In the course, they will have access to online classes, tools and activity plans, always in line with school curricula and regulatory frameworks. The course is offered in 5 modules, which altogether make up a 25-hour certification: Introduction to Digital Citizenship (5h); Security, Privacy, Encryption and Digital Reputation (5h); Respect, Empathy and Safe Relationships Online (5h); Welfare and Emotional Health on the Internet (5h); Media Education and Disinformation in Elections (5h).
The second engagement cycle, after the course, is to Mobilizers, when up to 100 young people will be invited to carry out at least one educational activity based on support material they will receive from Safernet. The bonuses and awards are focused on benefiting young people from all regions of the country who are able to take impact actions from paper and mobilize adolescents or educators.
The 50 most engaged mobilizers could become Leaders Digital Citizen sites, continuing to carry out activities and receiving greater awards. In this third engagement cycle, they will be invited to events organized by Safernet and will have access to special mentorships to develop leadership skills, strategic articulation and impact methodologies in education, respecting local diversities and challenges.
The fourth cycle of the program takes place in November 2022, at the Educathon. It is a marathon in which teams of teenagers and their educators create and execute an action derived from the program in their schools or communities. Up to 25 young people who have distinguished themselves as Leaders will become tutors, helping teams create creative projects that have a lasting impact on schools. This year, 50 teams of teenagers will be able to participate in the marathon, also competing for prizes. Young people who participate in this level of the program will receive a grant of R$1000 for one month.
Of the tutors, Safernet intends to reach the group of 10 breeders who will participate in the III Youth Summit, an event held in person, in February 2023, during the week of Safer Internet Day 2023. The challenge for Creators will be to apply all the experience they acquired in the program by creating activity plans to impact their local communities throughout of February. Participants at this level will receive a grant of R$1500 for one month.
“We are very proud of our long-standing partnership with Safernet with the Digital Citizen program. The focus of this new cycle is that the program has more and more young people leading the public debate on education and the internet”, says Carolina Ferracini, Program Manager in Public Policies at Meta.
“The program is in its third year with new opportunities, the main one being that more young people will be able to get involved, according to the topics they are most interested in and the time they have available”, says Guilherme Alves, project manager for Cidadão. Digital. “In this way, we hope to reach more schools, including face-to-face activities, this year, which is marked by the return to the classroom after two years of distancing caused by the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Safernet's goal is to create training, engagement and reward strategies throughout the cycles, strengthening a network formed by hundreds of young people interested in positively impacting public education.
According to Rodrigo Nejm, Director of Education at Safernet, Cidadão Digital maintains its innovative spirit and is connected with the most current discussions on the safe use of technologies. “Support for democracy and civic engagement is strengthened with content on Electoral Misinformation in the training course. We have also been working for more teenagers to become protagonists in education for digital citizenship, expanding the Educathon and strengthening the discussion on well-being on the Internet”.
More information about the first two years of the Digital Citizen can be found at:
