Ensuring On-Line Safety for Young People in the Borough of Waltham Forest

We recently held an event in the London Borough of Waltham Forest which was targeted at mothers in the Borough. The event was based on the benefits and threats of the Internet and speaking at the event was Commander Mak Chishty from the Metropolitan Police Service. The Director of Faith Matters also spoke at the event and discussed cases involving young men who were radicalised on-line and the manner in which they self radicalised. The session raised genuine concerns that mothers in the room had around protecting their young sons and daughters from material which could influence them and affect their future prospects by drawing them into criminality or worse still, violent activities.

Discussions involved:

• Highlighting the need for mothers to engage with their sons and daughters on their on-line consumption of information and to talk through issues that young people had picked up on-line.
• The strengths and benefits of using the web and also the way that information was being used by groups to try and influence young people and draw them into international conflicts like Syria.
• How mothers can raise issues and where they can get support from to learn more about the web?
• Getting information for mothers on some of the extreme groups which may be using the web to promote their narratives.
• Getting more information as to how young people can assist local charities and structures around Syria since mothers raised this as an ongoing area of concern. This has been something that has been raised on more than one occasion and the Syrian conflict continues to have impacts for young people in the UK.

Also, at the event was the JAN Trust who briefly touched on their Web-Guardians project which has been rolled out in some London boroughs.

Finally, we would like to thank the Kiran project for their involvement in this session.