The Department of Homeland Security shared new resources to help keep students safe online this school year. DHS runs an awareness campaign called Know2Protect, whose goal is to help keep children and teens safe from online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). For the first time since the campaign’s launch in April, the agency has released materials for educators specifically.
“Our Know2Protect campaign is equipping teachers, school administrators, and others — the trusted and well-positioned adults in whom children often confide — to help their students identify and prevent this crime,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas in a press release.
The resources, which the department unveiled in August, include tips and classroom materials created to help educators identify and prevent online CSEA. These include training videos, worksheets and informational materials to send home to families, posters and infographics to display throughout school buildings, classroom activities such as coloring pages and word searches, and more.
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“Educators are often the first responders when it comes to dealing with the real-world impact of the horror of online child exploitation and abuse,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in the DHS press release.
Other prominent individuals spoke to the importance of keeping students safe from this type of harm in the press release as well, including the chief operating officer of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the senior vice president and chief safeguarding officer at Scouting America, and more.
While laws such as the Children’s Internet Protection Act require schools to protect students from harmful or obscene content, there are few resources explicitly created to protect children from online CSEA. DHS has established partnerships with leading organizations across the country to drive awareness, recognition and change.
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