by Jayne Cravens from the Virtual Volunteering Project

An organization's online safety program should have four goals:

• To protect participants' privacy and personal information (participants include staff, volunteers, clients, parents and youth)
• To screen out participants in your program who would abuse or exploit other participants or your computer programs
• To prevent opportunities for abuse or exploitation of participants by anyone outside your program
• To protect youth from inappropriate online materials or information.

It's up to you, the sponsoring agency, to decide what role online activities will play as part of your formal youth development or after-school program. This role, in turn, will guide you in your online safety measures. Ask yourself the following questions to help determine the kinds of online safety guidelines you need:

• How will online activities that youth undertake as part of your program enhance your overall program mission?
• Will online activities involve youth simply surfing Web sites, or will youth be interacting with others online?
• Will a person be designated to supervise youth while they are using computers?
• Will youth be allowed to engage in program-related activities from a home computer?

Starting Place: Establishing a Code of Conduct

Just as you do with onsite, face-to-face activities, your organization needs to establish and communicate a code of conduct for online activities for youth and adults involved with your program.

Start with your code or standards for onsite, face-to-face activities, and let that guide you in creating online standards. For instance, what's your policy regarding youth contacting other youth, volunteers or staff outside of program hours? What's your policy regarding youth sharing contact information (home phone numbers, home addresses) with each other? What is your organization's standard for inappropriate communications? What are youth supposed to do if they witness illegal, harmful or other inappropriate activity while participating in your program? Use those standards and consider your organizational culture to build your online code of conduct.

It is crucial to involve youth participants in creating your code of conduct. Talk about what online behavior youth themselves would define as inappropriate. Allowing youth to explore the issues will encourage them to accept your suggestions for their Internet use. It also will provide material for a rich and interactive conversation or project about behavior, societal codes, different forms of communication, and so forth.

Other Safety Suggestions

Not every program will be able to incorporate all of the following suggestions. The key to online safety is communicating your online safety policies to ALL participants and parents and helping them understand exactly what to do and whom to contact if there is ever any question concerning young people's safety or the material they are encountering online as part of your program.

• Encourage phone calls and face-to-face meetings with parents to discuss online activities, and make sure all parents are aware of your online safety practices.

• Advise participants to not respond to messages that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, or threatening or that make them feel uncomfortable. Encourage participants to tell a designated staff member if they encounter such messages.

• Most organizations advise online volunteers to never tell anyone online personal information (e.g., where they live or work, their phone number, their full name). Some organizations even have special email or bulletin board "alias" systems, in which no real email addresses are used and only the forum moderator knows which alias goes with what email address. These stricter systems usually are used for online interactions involving children or for people discussing a particularly sensitive, personal subject matter.

• Most organizations tell their participants to never meet anyone in person they have met online, even in conjunction with their online program, except at agency-sponsored events. At the very least, participants should be advised to notify the program director and their parents about any offers that involve another participant coming to a meeting or having someone visit their house. If your agency has a policy against such meetings, make sure this is clearly communicated to all participants and their parents.

• If your program is going to allow participants to communicate using a system that can receive email from people outside of your program, you should learn how to read email headers so that you can tell what Internet Service Provider (ISP) people are using. If someone receives an inappropriate e-mail, it may be a violation of the sender's ISP terms of service (TOS), and the ISP will want to know about this misuse of their system. The ISP also will help identify the person who sent the inappropriate e-mail.

• People online may not be who they seem, even youth participants from another organization, and everyone needs to be reminded of this fact. Participants also should remember that people may not be telling the truth online.

• All participants should be instructed to notify someone at your organization if they encounter inappropriate situations in your online program -- if someone violates your codes of conduct, encourages other participants to engage in an illegal activity, engages in online harassment, and so forth. You should have plans of action for any of those situations. SafetyEd International has research papers and resources on cyberstalking, gender issues in online situations, and online harassment; staff and volunteers at your agency should become familiar with those resources.

• Filtering software is controversial and often ineffective. It may work temporarily for young children, but it can be bypassed by teenagers creative enough to understand the application, and such software often arbitrarily excludes Web sites. The Virtual Volunteering Project suggests that instead of relying on filtering software, parents, teachers and program leaders should become active participants in their students' Internet exploration. The key is to ask questions that foster open discussion about what youth are encountering on the Internet.

• Program managers should encourage parents to show an interest in their children's online activities. Encourage parents to ask their children routinely what they are seeing online, whether at school or at home, and encourage parents to visit sites with their children. Program managers should do the same with youth in their charge.

Other Resources to Teach Online Safety

Safe and Responsible use of the internet: A Guide for Educators
http://responsiblenetizen.org/onlinedocs/index.html
Creator : Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
Notes : Considerations to help programs formulate internet usage policies. Site also contains articles on: Philosophy and Approach, Filtering/ Blocking, Privacy and Commercialism, and Technology Planning.

Web awareness for teachers
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/wa_teachers/index.cfm
Creator: Media Awareness Network
Notes: Information for parents and teachers to be aware of issues of using the internet, including articles: “Fact or Folly: Authenticating internet information”, “Internet Learning Resources for Teachers” and “How marketers target kids”. Educational games for students include: “Privacy Playground” (ages 8-10), and “Jo Cool or Jo Fool” (grades 8-10).

Children and the Internet : Policies that work
Children and the Internet
Creator: American Library Association
Notes: A series of articles to help programs develop policies on internet usage. Includes “Don’t doesn’t work” and “Sample Internet Policies”.

Wiredsafety.org
http://www.wiredsafety.org
Notes: Valuable up to date information about what’s new online—good information for parents, teachers. Also links to fun sites for kids, tweens and teens.

Childnet’s Kidsmart Project
http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/
Creator: Childnet International
Notes: Includes online “Parent’s seminar” , lesson plans for teachers, and games to teach youth about online safety.

i-SAFE America, Inc.
http://www.isafe.org
Notes: Online safety programs and information for youth and adults. I-Mentors program engages youth in grades 5-12 to educate others about how to stay safe online. Includes links for youth-- i-SAFE chatroom, contests and newsletters. i-LEARN is an online video-based training program for educators.

MySpace Safety Tips
MySpace Safety Tips
Creator: MySpace.com
Notes: Guidelines for participating in the Myspace community. Includes tips for parents of youth members.