Child Protection & Participation 2.0

As soon as you hear internet and youth in one sentence, you think risk. Who is going to protect them and how?

Youth themselves seem to see mostly opportunity and excitement. A chance to say and show what they want, and to whom they want. A long longed for venue to express themselves and to engage or socialise with others. As evidenced by their posts, photos and amounts of friends, risk is not on their radar. At least not for now.

A quick look into one of the millions of Facebook pages easily shows more photos than would fit into a shoe box (yes I will put them into an album!). Rarely do the people on these photos look serious or formal. Casual is the rule and partying not the exception. The one thing that always strikes me looking at these photos is how different they are as compared to the photos that normally accompany a so-called Sponsored Child Introduction or Update. Smiles, pride and self confidence are the norm on Facebook, while shy, serious and uneasy faces feature on most photos Plan sends to sponsors.

As part of our preparations for PlanLive we research and engage with several of the major online social networks. Today I was quite shocked when I visited the Hi5.com social network site that is very popular in many African and Latin American countries. Hi5 has a so-called flirt feature where you can click through photos of members of the opposite sex and—apparently—of a much younger age. Want to flirt? You can click Yes or No. Click No and you see another girl (haven't tried simulating being a woman, so not sure how that works), click Yes and you can send the girl or young woman a message after you have paid a modest sum of Hi5 coins, a virtual currency.

How is PlanLive going to deal with this? We have created a Child Protection Task Force to further look into this important issue, and to continue doing so in the future. We are looking at it from the perspective of children and youth, of their caretakers (parents, teachers, community leaders, etc.), of Plan, and of the social networking technology. For each phase of the pilot we want to establish the necessary mitigation measures to be taken in terms of awareness raising, policies, procedures, training, alert and reporting mechanisms, monitoring and so on. If you feel you have something to contribute to this Task Force we would urge you to contact us.