Google.org donates $1m to Bardardos for digital literacy training programme
Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has announced is extending its support to children’s charity Barnardos by providing a $1 million of grant funding to promote safe Internet use for children and teens.
The announcement follows the success of the initial online safety programme launched by Barnardos in 2019 with €1 million in grant funding from Google.org. Over the past five years, more than 3,000 workshops in 700 schools across Ireland have reached over 90,000 students, and delivered over 2,000 parent workshops on online safety nationwide.
The new grant will enable Barnardos to extend the programme to children aged between 10 and 15 and will address new areas including AI. The new programme will also see Barnardos working in collaboration for the first time to help shape the programme with Webwise, leading online safety organisation and Media Literacy Ireland, Ireland’s media literacy network.
The grant was announced today at the Google Growing Up in the Digital Age summit, which convened experts from industry, academia, government and civil society to discuss how young people can be protected, respected and empowered online. The summit was hosted by the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Dublin.
With this grant Barnardos plans to expand and redesign its online safety programme to in collaboration with Webwise and Media Literacy Ireland; the development of a virtual programme to significantly increase the scale and reach of the programme; and designing a crisis incident response to provide advice and practical support to schools where a significant incident of online bullying or abuse has occurred.
Suzanne Connolly, CEO, Barnardos said: “Over the last five years we have seen high levels of engagement with our online safety programme supported by Google.org. The workshops have been very well received with 85% of children stating they found the workshops useful and 98% of teachers stating they would recommend the programme to other schools. This new grant allows us to extend both the reach and scope of the online safety programme. We are especially excited by the collaboration with Media Literacy Ireland and Webwise, which will allow for a first of its kind co-creation of materials between different organisations.”
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