In less than two weeks, on the 29th and 30th of November, the first KID_ACTIONS EU Policy, Research and Practitioners Forum will take place in Trento, Italy. Educators, researchers, youth workers, professors, people from the IT sector and many more, will travel to Trento to take part in this forum on-site or will join the forum online. The different stakeholders will gather to discuss the important matter of preventing and responding to cyberbullying. Make sure to join this event if you are interested in or working (indirectly) on the topic of cyberbullying. Register for the forum here!
The nature of the forum is highly interactive. The first results of the tools that will be included in the KID_ACTIONS educational toolkit will be presented. The participants can provide their input on what in their opinion will work well to reach the goal of preventing and responding to cyberbullying. On the intersection of policy, research and practice the KID_ACTIONS project aims to find solutions and policy recommendations directed at cyberbullying.
The agenda of the first day shows a diverse and interesting list of activities. After a welcome session, an overview of research in the field of cyberbullying will be presented by Dr Veronica Donoso. She has more than 18 years of experience in research and policy work. Verónica is a researcher at the Institute for Media Studies (KU Leuven) and an independent consultant specialised in digital literacy, online safety, and education. A panel discussion with experts in the field of cyberbullying will react to the presentation of the research findings and will shed light on what the ‘reality’ of cyberbullying ‘in the field’ looks like. It promises to be an interesting discussion with experts sharing their insights from the IT sector, Sociology, Linguistics, Communication in Mental health and Media Analysis and Human Development.
Another highlight on the first day of the forum is the keynote speaker Alex Holmes, Deputy CEO of the non-profit The Diana Award. He also founded the peer-to-peer support programme ‘Anti-Bullying Ambassadors’. Alex has plenty of experience in training young people to combat bullying. For a preview of his interesting insights, you can watch his TED-talk here. He will close the first day with his key-note speech: ‘Bullying – a never-ending battle’.
On the second day, the participants are welcomed back to the forum. There is an interactive Deep Dive session scheduled. Here, the KID_ACTIONS digital educational platform will be presented where the participants can share their input to improve this platform.
Next on the agenda is the stakeholder Roundtable: how can KID_ACTIONS outputs meet stakeholders’ needs? Experts from the field will join this session either onsite or online. The Roundtable is extremely diverse with experts from education, gaming and text analysis to name a few. The goal of this session is to investigate how the digital and non-digital tools developed by the KID_ACTIONS project can be used by the participants in supporting their efforts.
In the closing session, the participants will meet for the last time to discuss the key takeaways of the forum. In this closing session, there is room for participants to give directions for possible policy recommendations. By bringing all the different stakeholders together in this forum the KID_ACTIONS project aims to further develop the tools and resources of the project in a way that will support the stakeholders in their efforts to detect and respond to cyberbullying in the best way possible.
Secure your spot for this interactive forum by registering today! Make sure to share your experiences of the forum on your social media channels by using the hashtag #KidActionsForum, #TogetherAgainstCyberbullying.