Digital citizenship: How can we empower young people to be digital leaders?
On 20th of June Antonino Pietrini and Jure Mudronja Pleša, representing A Rocca – Associazione Artistica Culturale, took a part in an exciting event about Digital citizenship in Brussels, organized by Google.
At Google, they believe that young people should learn to be upstanders, not bystanders in order to create a fun, positive and vibrant community online. It is of a great importance to equip young people with the necessary skills so that they can be empowered to make the right choices online. This means learning how to be a digital leader, not just citizen – to know how to respond to trolls online, and when and where to go for help. These skills are valuable in everyday life.
The need for such initiatives comes from the fact that very often we assume that ‘digital natives’ know how to use the internet because they grew up with it. But children grow up surrounded by cars and we don’t wait until they are 18 to teach them road safety. The same is true for internet safety. Digital citizenship initiatives are a green cross code for young people to be positive and proactive citizens online.
The Event, Digital citizenship: How can we empower young people to be digital leaders? was a great opportunity to hear from experts in the field; How do other industry partners help young people to learn digital skills? What do young people think? What about parents? We had a lively and interactive discussion and we learnt from each other about how to best empower young people with the right skills for the future.
We gave our contribution to this event, by participating in very interesting panel about Young Digital Leaders project. The panel was moderated by Lucie Parker from ISD, organization that was coordinating the project, and there were three participants, representatives of three organization that had been selected for conducting the pilot phase activities in their countries – Italy, Romania and Sweden –. In Romania, the activities were delivered by the Group of European Youth for Change (GEYC), in Sweden by Kommon Ground, in Italy, by Associazione Artistica Culturale (A Rocca).
Whole video of the panel you can find here
More info about the Young Digital Leaders project please find here.
More photos from the event please find here