eSafe launches digital safety training for early childhood educators

The Emirates Safer Internet Society (eSafe) commenced online safety training for Early Childhood Educators as part of its ongoing Digital Wellbeing in Early Childhood Project.

The inauguration of the "Early Childhood Educators Training Program" was performed at Emirates Private School in Abu Dhabi by Adel Alkaff Al Hashmi, Vice Chairman - Emirates Safer Internet Society. He said, “As we address numeracy and literacy skills, we must also address digital safety skills early in a child’s life.”

Amina Al Otaiba, School Principal, thanked the society for its awareness-raising efforts and for creating a safe and positive environment for children on the internet and social media.

Jayesh Sebastian, CEO of Tachyon IT Consultancy, representing the project implementing partner was also present. In Jayesh’s words, “Dedicated efforts are required to develop a digital safety net ecosystem for children.”

eSafe with funding support from The Walt Disney Company, in Phase -1 of this project has been helping to build the knowledge of first-time parents for maximizing the cognitive, physical and social benefits of technology use while minimizing the risks to their young children. The parents were made aware about various aspects of protecting their children from online risks, monitoring their exposure to websites and social networking platforms, ensuring their online safety.

eSafe worked with several early childhood learning centers and elementary schools within the United Arab Emirates to reach out to parents of young children aged 0 to 6 years. Till date, eSafe has reached out to over 337,500 parents, of which 408 parents received face to face training and the rest were part of an advocacy and awareness raising campaign using social media.

In its second phase of this initiative, eSafe is sensitizing early years childhood educators to the potential online risks and threats to cultivate a healthy and empowering online environment in the classroom. Additionally, eSafe is also producing guidelines for early childhood educators on how to introduce the concept of digital safety to children aged 4 to 8 years old.

Today, eSafe kick-started training early childhood educators and provided them an insight as to how young children engage with content in digital contexts; how to set up technology in classroom with online safety in mind. The training is specifically formulated around practical advice for building good habits, self-regulation skills and critical thinking around children’s technology use. This training is developed under the guidance of Ms. Sanjana Bhardwaj, a Child Online Protection Expert and Advisor to eSafe and the Digital Wellbeing project.

As part of this project, eSafe will be developing a range of interactive resources which will be made available both in Arabic and English languages.