Digital Defence & Activism Lessons: Equipping young people to navigate contemporary digital cultures in and around school

Lead Research Organisation: University of Leicester
Department Name: Media and Communication

Abstract

In 2015, a group of girls set up a Twitter account as part of their secondary school feminist society. Less than an hour after posting their first tweet, they received a barrage of angry, sexualized responses. Over the coming weeks, they were attacked, threatened, and belittled. The girls were told to 'kill themselves', called 'Feminazis,' sent porn links, had official statistics on sexual violence challenged, told to 'shut up' and 'make me a sandwich.'

Since 2014, we have been studying young people's use of digital technologies to challenge gender inequality, sexism and harassment (Mendes et al. 2019). While digital technologies offer new possibilities for change, they make those who speak out vulnerable to vicious, often gendered, sexualized and racialized trolling. Our research shows that while some pupils possess necessary personal resilience and digital literacy skills to cope with these challenges, many do not and end up feeling silenced, politically disengaged, or traumatized.

Drawn from broader challenges of keeping young people safe online, combating disinformation, developing pathways to resilience, and fostering opportunities for political engagement identified through our research, this follow-on project has three key aims:

First, we will develop seven bespoke Digital Defence & Digital Activism (DD&A) workshops for secondary-students (Key Stages 3-5). The first three Digital Defence sessions will cover general topics such as how to identify disinformation and fake news in a 'post-truth' world (Marwick & Lewis 2017), developing online safety strategies, image sharing and the law, and managing mental and physical health. The final four Digital Activism workshops will teach young people to harness digital technologies for political activism. We focus on feminist activism because it allows us to draw on findings from our original AHRC award, and because there is a need for feminist education, training and political engagement (Ringrose 2012).

Second, we will develop workshops and guidance for teachers on how to link our DD&A workshops to the newly mandatory Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum.

Third, we will develop open-access resources such as handbooks, podcasts, worksheets and videos from social media influencers. These digitized resources, hosted by Leicester University's Figshare repository for a 10-year-minimum will maximize the workshops' reach to new (inter)national audiences, enabling their sustainability beyond the funding period.

While our original AHRC award focused specifically on challenges and opportunities of digital feminist activism, scholars have documented vicious trolling towards others who dare to 'talk back' (hooks 1989) to oppression, including campaigners on LGBTQ+ issues, and those fighting for racial equality online (Scheurman et al. 2018). As a result, safety strategies employed by our participants have broad applicability to all activists, or anyone who wishes to express their views via digital technologies.

Working with key stakeholders and collaborators, this project will have immediate impact with 2.3k secondary students who will gain specific understanding of gender and sexual inequalities; laws around image sharing; improved pathways to resilience and digital literacy skills. Longer term impact will include increased and more effective civic engagement; a reduction in criminal offences and prosecution of image-based crimes (revenge porn, upskirting); a generation better equipped to identify and combat disinformation; and decreased levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

The project will also immediately impact 2.5k teachers who will be able to deliver effective and relevant RSE lessons. In the long term, it will develop teachers who are more confident addressing 'the digital' in young people's lives.

Through digitizing our resources, the project has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people in years to come.

Planned Impact

This project emerges at a time when online sexual violence, fake news and young people's mental health are identified as pressing social and political issues. Our AHRC funded research demonstrates both highly sophisticated 'digital defence' and activist strategies some participants use to cope, mitigate, avert, and fight back against these challenges. This new project will impact:

(a) Young People, who will benefit from increased digital literacy skills, identifying fake news and disinformation, the law and image sharing. They will develop pathways to resilience, including how to block and report harmful, offensive or illegal content and how to become politically engaged via digital technologies. Our workshops will reach 2.3k secondary school pupils across England (77 workshops x 30 participants). News of our workshops however will reach 600k+ through content created by social media influencers Hannah Witton and Calum McSwiggan. We will measure impact through surveys immediately before and after each workshop to monitor learning, and another survey one month on to capture changes in beliefs, practices and actions.

(b) Schools and Teachers will benefit from having long-lasting, digitized, evidence based materials to teach RSE lessons, and a better understanding of contemporary issues faced by young people online. Our teacher training workshops will directly reach 2.5k teachers across the UK in schools (30 workshops x 30 teachers), via PGCE programs (125 students x 2), a workshop hosted at UCL (50 teachers), and through ASCL conferences (1.3k teachers). News of these workshops will reach 19k+ through direct communication with ASCL's members. Impact with teachers will be measured in the same way as with students, via a series of surveys.

(c) Sexplain will benefit through a fundamental reorientation of their strategic direction, focus, content and materials. Sexplain will grow as an organization, becoming (inter)national experts in RSE delivery. Sexplain is committed to training other organizations how to use our workshops, thus increasing their reach and sustainability. Impact will be measured through monitoring access to our resources hosted on Figshare and embedded on Sexplain's website. We will track mentions of all materials by stakeholders such as academics, government bodies, third-sector workers, and activist groups via DOIs.

(d) Educational Associations and Bodies such as the ASCL will benefit by promoting cutting edge research and interventions into pressing issues - such as rising levels of mental disorders, increased levels of (online) sexual violence, and new RSE requirements. We will build relationships with other organizations such as Teach First, and UK Safer Internet Centre.

(e) Society as a whole will benefit as young people become more civically engaged, politically aware, and feel safer navigating digital landscapes. We may witness decreased stress levels, anxiety, and depression, as society develops better coping strategies to combat trolling and online harassment. Increased awareness of laws around online image sharing may lead to a reduction of criminal offences or prosecutions, measured through government crime statistics, the Internet Watch Foundation or Revenge Porn Helpline.

Sustainability: Sexplain will deliver, refine and build upon all workshops beyond the funding period. All materials will be digitized and stored on easily updated file formats to reflect likely social, technological or regulatory changes over time and space. Podcasts and videos will focus on broad and pervasive issues such as trolling, harassment and mental health to ensure a longer lifespan. Sexplain and the ASCL will promote all workshops and materials to their networks of charities, associations, schools and councils (e.g. GirlGuiding UK, the Sex Education Forum). There is significant potential to promote our workshops beyond England where governments are revisiting sex education in schools.
 
Description We developed two new workshops for secondary school students on how to better understand and challenge sexual and gender-based violence in and around schools, through enhancing their digital literacies and digital defence skills. These workshops were co-produced with the School of Sexuality Education and the Association of School and College Leaders and hosted on the ASCL website. We also created supplementary training workshops and resources for teachers which are aligned with the newly mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum. To date these workshops and resources have reached approximately 2500 students in 15 schools and more than 1250 teachers in hundreds of school sites across England.

Our workshops have educated students about sexual and gender-based violence and equipped them with digital defence strategies to stay safe online and practices to enable effective activism to challenge sexual violence. The workshops include interactive activities to enhance student engagement and learning, including video, scenarios, post it and art activism creative and participatory pedagogies. We found that students rated the two workshops as highly effective. Focus group and workshop survey data showed a positive impact on students' learning including an enhanced understanding of sexual violence and its different forms, and an increased awareness of activism and how to be an active bystander. This learning equipped students with concrete strategies for challenging sexual violence.

We also found that the workshops provided students with opportunities to engage critically with the workshop materials. Several findings emerged around their critical reflections including different gendered responses to the workshops, students' dissatisfaction with the RSE curriculum, their general lack of confidence in teachers as workshop facilitators and most students' distrust of their schools' safeguarding policies and abilities to respond effectively to disclosures of sexual violence.

While we argue that there are no easy solutions to these issues, we offer frameworks for change, including structural ones that need to be made within institutions, legal changes, policy changes, and cultural changes towards our attitude and understanding of young people and digital technologies. These processes must be intersectional and attuned to how vectors of identity shape people's experiences. Through co-producing an intervention with an award-winning sex education charity, we highlight ways academics can engage in meaningful research with partners.

For Schools:
- Educate young people about sexual violence from an early age
- Sexual violence prevention education should be delivered by trained experts - ideally external to the school
- All teaching and non-teaching staff should undergo comprehensive sexual violence prevention and response training (which links to RSE curriculum and whole school policies)
- Students' voices should be centred
- Ensure reporting processes are clear and transparent

For parents and carers
- Create a safe environment where your child feels able to talk to you if they need to
- Favour conversations and education over digital solutions to online risks and harms

For young people
- Tell your school what you want to see

For Government
- The Department for Education and Ofsted must provide clearer language and terminology relating to the scope and forms of technology-facilitated sexual and gender-based violence (TFSGBV).
- Relationships and sex education plays a key part in sexual violence prevention, yet schools lack funding for staff training, including on trauma-informed practice, responding to disclosures and understanding sexual violence, all of which are vital to the delivery of high-quality RSE.
Exploitation Route All of our resources will be made open access and freely available to anyone to use (including other scholars to test out and measure their impact). The PI (Mendes) having recently moved to Canada has begun rolling out these projects in the Canadian context. We also have contacts in Ireland and have been rolling out these workshops and interventions there as well.
Sectors Education,Other
 
Description Please refer to the section Influence on Policy, Practice, Patients and the Public for a much more detailed account of the impact we have and continue to see with this work. This project emerged at a critical time - in which the need for better education about (tech facilitated) sexual violence was really emerging, as well as the need for better digital literacy skills so that young people are better equipped to navigate a digital environment. It's very clear that the workshops we developed filled a real need within schools around the RSE curriculum. For example, many students told us they had not received any RSE, and those that did were rarely taught about sexual violence, never-the-less how it was facilitated by digital technologies: In school . . . we don't get taught about like the sexual harassment online. (School 1, Focus Group Year 9). Participant: [we were taught] about safe sex, and also legal punishments for if you have sex if you're under the legal age. But it was very general. It wasn't very in-depth. Interviewer: And did you learn anything about the digital issues? Participant: No. (School 2 Cornwall, Focus Group Year 9) Yeah, actually, things like dick pics I didn't know that that was classed as harassment, I just thought that was just something that was annoying and gross (Surrey, School 1) I thought that it was extremely informing to learn about image-based abuse online, and also learning about other sexual violence that there could be online. At the workshop, I even learnt what the definition of slut-shaming was. (School 4 Norfolk, Year 9, Focus Group, England) Boy: "I felt very enlightened by the two sessions I've had. It's made me have a completely different outlook on my life, and how I would act in the future. I feel like a completely different person now. I feel like I've matured through these sessions. Like how I know not to be violent, or to touch anyone without consent." (School 7, London, mixed academy). We were also struck by the ways our workshops were received by schools. In light of the Ofsted report on sexual violence in schools, many schools around the country have been scrambling to address this issue. Our workshops filled one gap - content, but it became clear that few teachers are equipped to deliver these sessions in a trauma-informed, transformational way. We pivoted slightly during the grant to try and place more emphasis supporting teachers, particularly as it became clear that the government was reluctant to give schools funding to bring in relationship and sex education experts. While this is still a recommendation, we recognize that teachers are going to need to be equipped to deliver this content, and we focused on supporting them through this. There is significant scope to build upon this work, particularly around continued professional development for teachers or going into PGCE programs and training teachers.
First Year Of Impact 2021
Sector Education
Impact Types Societal
 
Description Policy Briefing to UK Policy Makers regarding Online Harms Bill
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
 
Description Teacher training
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to new or improved professional practice
Impact Post-workshop surveys distributed to teachers showed that the training workshops were also rated as highly effective. For example, almost all respondents (95%) agreed or strongly agreed that the training workhop had improved their knowledge of what sexual violence is and the different forms it takes, in particular those forms experienced, witnessed, and enacted by young people. The majority of teachers (82.5%) said that since attending the training workshop, they would feel more confident responding to a disclosure/intervening in an incident of sexual violence made/experienced by a student and that they would feel better able to teach/empower young people to challenge sexual violence. "We had a conversation today because I had a thing today where I did actually think back to last night of what we were talking about and how to deal with what was happening in front of me at that moment. So I found it really useful." "I sent out the Stats for Survey straight away and 25 people fully responded and staff comments were, 100% I feel confident now on how to deal with a disclosure, and the majority of staff said that we need to start teaching this at a younger age. And now I think they feel from reading the survey results, most of the staff feel more confident in how to deal with it as a result of the training, which is great, and it was what I wanted to open and see really. I wanted to see the staff say they are more confident." Furthermore, most teachers (89.8%) said they would apply the content of the training workshop to their relations with others and 92.5% agreed/strongly agreed that they would recommend the training to others. "...I thought the staff training was brilliant andmaybe we just buy in those external expertise and we then have the parent sessions. And as many people say, as a school, you can only go so far, you can offer everything, you lead a horse to water, you can't make those parents come and you can't make those students understand or believe those things, but we can educate them in it." When asked if they would do anything differently after attending the training workshop, more than two thirds of respondents (76.9%) said yes, including the following: "I am going to look at our programme and incorporate the delivery of the workshops you have provided. In addition I will be looking to ask your group to come in and work with our students on this topic." "Provide my pupils with more information in order to be able to challenge these behaviours." "I will seek out resources that best help me to deliver sex-positive lessons that are not based purely on risk and 'what could go wrong', but rather in understanding what is positive and healthy." "I will explicitly teach what is sexual violence to our students and to use the resources explored." "I am going to include Activating for Change more explicitly in my sessions." "Change how these topics are delivered in PSHE and discussed in school." "Adapt some of our lessons to include the information given today." "Signpost more avenues of support." Teachers also noted the effectiveness of our monthly workshops, delivered online, in regards to educating them about the nature of (digital) sexual violence, and why young people do not report. For example, 85% of teachers agreeing or strongly agreeing the workshop improved their knowledge of what sexual violence is, and the different forms it takes. A further 87.2% agreed or strongly agreed the workshops specifically improved their knowledge of digital sexual violence. 82.5% of teachers also commented on how the workshops improved their understanding of why young people underreport incidents of sexual violence, and 82.5% agreed that our workshops enabled them to feel better able to teach and empower young people to challenge sexual violence. Another key success from the workshops was how 82.5% of teachers recorded feeling more confident responding to a disclosure or intervening if a student experienced sexual violence. A further 89.8% of teachers said they will apply the content of the workshop to their relations with others, and a further 92.5% said they would recommend this workshop to others. When asked if teachers would do anything differently as a result of this workshop, 76.9% said yes, while 15.4% were unsure. Free text responses included: "I am going to look at our programme and incorporate the delivery of the workshops you have provided." "Much more information to give pupils in year group assemblies- types of sexual harassment and them understanding what constitutes it will be really beneficial." "Ensure information and resources used in school are up to date." "I will seek out resources that best help me to deliver sex-positive lessons that are not based purely on risk and "what could go wrong", but rather in understanding what is positive and healthy." "Provide my pupils with more information in order to be able to challenge these behaviours" "Use inclusive pronouns, say people with penises/vulvas/uteruses" "I am going to include activating for change more explicitly in my sessions" "Change how these topics are delivered in PSHE and discussed in school" "Signpost more avenues of support" "Include this in our PSHE lessons" "I will explicitly teach what is sexual violence to our students and to use the resources explored"
 
Description Workshops on understanding and combatting sexual violence in schools
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to new or improved professional practice
Impact Post-workshop surveys distributed to students showed that the two workshops were rated as extremely effective. For example, 88.6% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that Workshop 1 improved their knowledge of sexual violence and the different forms it takes. Focus group participants similarly discussed how Workshop 1 enhanced their understanding of sexual violence. In particular, they learned that sexual violence exists in several different, but interconnected forms, and that more 'everyday', trivialised and normalised forms of sexual violence, like street harassment and digital harassment and abuse, also constitutes sexual violence, in addition to physical forms (sexual assault and rape), which they had previously conceived as sexual violence. Students also understood that sexual violence is a pervasive occurrence for many people, particularly women and girls, rather than an individual problem (or not a problem at all). In this sense, the workshop served a consciousness-raising function and a denaturalisation of practices that the students previously considered normal. Thus, acts and actions that the students had viewed as normal until attending the workshop were reinterpreted as forms of harm and abuse. A high percentage of students (86.4%) agreed that Workshop 1 improved their knowledge of what digital sexual violence is and the actions it describes; nearly 90% of respondents (88.4%) said they would apply the content of the workshop to their relations with others and 85% agreed/strongly agreed they would recommend the workshops to others: In school . . . we don't get taught about like the sexual harassment online. (School 1, Focus Group Year 9). Participant: [we were taught] about safe sex, and also legal punishments for if you have sex if you're under the legal age. But it was very general. It wasn't very in-depth. Interviewer: And did you learn anything about the digital issues? Participant: No. (School 2 Cornwall, Focus Group Year 9) It was particularly interesting to see the young people learning about digital sexual violence a topic that was mostly neglected in their previous relationship and sex education at school: I thought the most shocking thing is that I found out that taking pictures like under skirts and that, just became illegal. I think more stuff like that would be good, because I didn't even realise that that was illegal. (School 5, North London All boys school Year 9, Focus Group, England) Yeah, actually, things like dick pics I didn't know that that was classed as harassment, I just thought that was just something that was annoying and gross but I mean yeah Int: That you almost just had to put up with? R: Yeah, and like on that video they also said, the girls [inaudible 0:15:45] said that you just sort of had to grow up and deal with it and I don't think that's right and I think it's good that people are becoming aware that this is what we have to live with until people see it. (school 1, Surrey). I thought that it was extremely informing to learn about image-based abuse online, and also learning about other sexual violence that there could be online. At the workshop, I even learnt what the definition of slut-shaming was. (School 4 Norfolk, Year 9, Focus Group, England) Post-Workshop 2 survey responses similarly revealed that most students were highly satisfied with their learning experience. For example, 92.1% agreed/strongly agreed that the workshop improved their understanding of activism and how to challenge sexual violence. Almost all respondents (97%) agreed/strongly agreed that the workshop increased their awareness of how to be an active bystander in situations of sexual violence. MP Big Bruce here. I really enjoyed learning about activism, and how we can help with combatting sexual assault and empowering victims of sexual assault. It really helps everyone to learn how to do this. (School 6, South East London). These findings were confirmed by focus group participants who reported that Workshop 2 equipped them with knowledge and strategies for challenging sexual violence and, in several cases, that these new tools would help foster behaviour change. Students, for instance, noted how Workshop 2 impacted on their personal outlook on life and how, armed with this new knowledge, they would act differently in the future. Boy: "I felt very enlightened by the two sessions I've had. It's made me have a completely different outlook on my life, and how I would act in the future. I feel like a completely different person now. I feel like I've matured through these sessions. Like how I know not to be violent, or to touch anyone without consent." (School 7, London, mixed academy). IV: Do you think that the things that you learned will change the way that you act or change your behaviours in any way? MP 100% yes. This included discussing how the workshops gave them a space to empathise with other people's experiences, empowering them to take action against sexual violence and to stand in solidarity with victim-survivors of sexual violence. Many focus group participants, echoing the survey findings, said that the 5Ds activity on bystander intervention equipped them with concrete solutions for challenging sexual violence. A high proportion of students (90.3%) thought that Workshop 2 increased their understanding of digital defence strategies to stay safe online and 86% thought the workshop enhanced their knowledge of self care strategies when using social media. We asked the students, "[a]fter attending the workshop will you do anything differently?" More than a third (39%) of respondents said yes. Comments included: "I'll report more things that happen to people and be an active bystander." "Stand up for others when needed." "When I see someone being harassed I will do something about it." "Make sure I use the 5Ds to help others". "Try and stop people from sharing nudes." "Be more safe on social media." "Try to help more instead of not getting involved." "I will be more of an activist." The young people were also clear that the scenario based learning was key as these address the issues in realistic ways and allowed them to have debate and dialogue with each other: FP Aliyah. I thought that the scenarios were good, because it showed the different type of violence, whether it was image based, or sexual violence, or sexual harassment. And without consent it could be one of those. Yes. FP Someya. And the scenarios that they showed that you have to get consent for different stuff. You can't just ask for consent for one thing and do everything with that one piece of consent. You have to issue multiple, and the scenarios were very They were realistic, it happens to people in real life. So people might be able to relate to it. And also it was very fair, because we did one for male, and one for female. (School 7 London)
 
Description Combatting Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: Supporting Young People in Schools, Social Relationships and on Social Media
Amount $400,000 (CAD)
Funding ID 1154711 
Organisation Government of Canada 
Department SSHRC - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Sector Public
Country Canada
Start 04/2022 
End 04/2027
 
Description Tier 2 Canada Research Chair
Amount $600,000 (CAD)
Funding ID CRC-2021-00143 
Organisation Government of Canada 
Department SSHRC - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Sector Public
Country Canada
Start 01/2022 
End 12/2027
 
Description Combatting the Andrew Tate Effect in Schools 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact Along with the charity Life Lessons and the Victim Response Unit in South Yorkshire, we delivered a session to 284 people on how to combat the 'Andrew Tate' effect in schools in which misogyny and anti-feminist rhetoric is on the rise. This contributes to rape culture and sexual violence in schools.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Everyone's Invited: Why we're not surprised about the #MeToo movement in UK schools 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Ringrose, Horeck and Mendes along with our RA and collaborators at the School of Sexuality Education wrote an article about the mass testimonies of sexual violence in British schools that emerged in early 2021
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/2021/04/27/everyones-invited-why-were-not-surprised-about-the-metoo-move...
 
Description Featured in CBC radio on apps that can protect women from social media harassment 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Featured in CBC radio on apps that can protect women from social media harassment
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://mms.tveyes.com/MediaView/?c3RhdGlvbj0xNDg2MCZTdGFydERhdGVUaW1lPTEyJTJmMDElMmYyMDIxKzA2JTNhMjE...
 
Description Parent Engagement 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact As part of both Digital Defence and our Covid-19 grant, we have been aware of parent's need for more information on how to tackle the gendered and sexualized online risks and harms their children experience. Working with SSE, we have developed and piloted workshops for parents to advise them on how they can discuss these difficult issues with their children. We have to date reached 298 parents - but workshops are just beginning to be rolled out.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Schools urgently need to tackle rape culture by educating pupils about online world 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Horeck, Ringrose, and Mendes co-authored a piece for the conversation about the importance of comprehensive, inclusive, and rights-based RSE which tackles issues such as sexual violence and nude image sharing as a key piece of the recovery from the Covid-19 Pandemic
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://theconversation.com/schools-urgently-need-to-tackle-rape-culture-by-educating-pupils-about-o...
 
Description Student Workshop Delivery 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact We have to date delivered/agreed to deliver two workshops we developed in collaboration with the School of Sexuality Education (SSE) with 16 schools around England and Wales. These workshops have/will reach approximately 2000 students. Workshop 1 is meant to educate students on the nature and scale of sexual violence. Workshop 2 teaches young people who they can be agents of change. We have also conducted 17 focus groups and rolling pre and post-surveys to evaluate these workshops with extremely positive responses, with students saying they are learning about the nature of sexual violence, who is likely to experience it (and how this is linked to intersectional identities). Students learnt new terms: "the people coming in taught us a lot more about the words and how that could affect a person, also how it's represented. So slut-shaming, we learnt that there are many different words for it and is more just the girls instead of the men, because we don't really have words for men about it."

These workshops were developed as part of AHRC grant Digital Defence and Activism Lessons, but we were able to roll them out on a larger scale as part of our other Covid-19 grant as a thank you to schools for doing a survey and focus groups with young people about their experiences of online risks and harms during Covid. As such, we have integrated the two projects to maximize our reach.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Student Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact From October 2020 until June 2022, along with our charitable partner the School of Sexuality Education, we delivered 2 workshops that we co-created to 2,495 students across the UK and Ireland. These focused on identifying and combatting sexual and gender based violence in schools, giving students digital literacy skills on tech facilitated aspects of this violence or how they could use digital technologies as agents of change and activism.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020,2021,2022
 
Description Teacher Training Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact Working with SSE, we co-developed workshops for schools as part of continued professional development which aims to to train teachers on how to deliver our student workshop. To date, we have rolled these out in 8 schools across the UK and Ireland, reaching over 100 teachers. We also now have plans to roll these workshops out across higher educational institutions and to schools in Canada.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Teacher Training Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact From Jan - June 2022 along with the School of Sexuality Education (SSE), we delivered a series of teacher training workshops on how to deliver 2 workshops we co-created with SSE to secondary school teachers, RSE, PSHE and school leaders in England. These workshops reached around 200 people.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Teacher Workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact From Nov 2021 until June 2022 we delivered in school workshops to teachers as part of their continued professional development on how to deliver two workshops we co-created with the School of Sexuality Education. These were delivered to 233 teachers in Cornwall, Leeds, London, Sheffield, Dublin, Leicestershire, Luton and Norwich.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Webinar training for teachers 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact In addition to developing workshops for teachers in specific schools, working with SSE, we have developed and rolled out webinars for teachers and school leaders on how to deliver out two student workshops which address and challenge sexual violence. These have been remarkably well attended by participants across the UK, Canada, and Ireland. We have to date reached nearly 800 teachers/school leaders and other school staff through this means. We have one scheduled every month in 2022 (and all have been 'sold out'). Post-workshop survey has shown us that teachers have told us they will use the content to shape their delivery of RSE, share this information with colleagues, and change school policies on sexual violence as a result.

Although the webinar content was developed as part of our Digital Defence and Activism grant, we have been able to attract more teachers to it through our Covid-19 grant.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Why Facebook and other social media companies need to be reined in 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Mendes co-authored an article for The Conversation about why social media companies need to be regulated to prevent online risks and harms.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://theconversation.com/why-facebook-and-other-social-media-companies-need-to-be-reined-in-16952...