The pandemic has forced everyone, especially the children, to stay indoors and use the internet for education and other prospective activities. Thus, Grameenphone, in collaboration with UNICEF, has extended the scope of online safety projects and introduced training for adolescents who are outside mainstream education. Through UNICEF’s Adolescent Club Programme (also known as Kishore-Kishori Club), the project aims to create awareness amongst 90,000 adolescents in Bangladesh.
Youth are increasingly spending more time online at a younger age. It has become vital to developing the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the online world more safely and enjoyably while promoting digital resilience. Today, online safety is a critical and vital conversation among parents, children, adolescents, teachers, and students. It is also essential for children who are in mainstream education and who are outside. Hence, Child online safety projects will continue to educate young children and adolescents about online safety and train them to navigate safely through digital space and get the best out of the experience.
With over a decade of experience with adolescent club, UNICEF, with the government of Bangladesh has been running multi-dimensional specialized project-based approaches to provide services to the adolescents of Bangladesh. The idea is to empower numerous youths to improve the quality of life. This year, the online safety project, which has entered the third year of collaboration between GP and UNICEF, will run application-based online training for adolescents across 1600 clubs across the country.
Since 2014, Grameenphone has been conducting outreach programs in school nationwide to create awareness and understanding of a safer internet environment for children and sensitize parents, guardians, and teachers. In 2019, the organization collaborated with Telenor Group and UNICEF and took a pledge to reach out to 1.2 million children countrywide along with 600,000 parents by the year 2020.
