Internews School- Female Teachers and Pupils on Digital Safety

By Moses Kay Fembeh

The Safe Sisters Fellowship (Internews) in collaboration with the Women and Girls Initiative in Sierra Leone, has held a training session on digital safety for female teachers and pupils on digital safety at Baptist Convention Primary School,Gloucester village, Freetown.

Four primary schools with a total number of 28 people attended the first ever digital safety training.

Ms. Christiana Sagba is a member of Internews- Safe Sisters Salone. She is also the Founder and Director of Women and Girls Initiative Sierra Leone, established on 11 October, 2018 with the aim of giving every girl and young woman an opportunity to be strong, confident and physically fit for socioeconomic drive and other empower benefits.

Delivering her keynote address, Sagba urged teachers and pupils to serve as agents of positive change, saying they should put into practice every information giving to them to keep them safer from internet fraudsters who come around pretending to be lovers.

She further spoke on the reason for the digital safety training for female teachers and pupils: “Our Sierra Leonean women and other women in Africa are sometimes bullied by the men in society and therefore, if any man or stranger sends a friend request and eventually message to date you, you have to be extra careful”.

The Founder and Director of Women and Girls Initiative Sierra Leone told this medium that the digital safety drive will not only be limited to the Gloucester community but will be taken to other parts of the country. “We are seeking for fund to foster this initiative nationwide”, she said.

She continued by saying that women and girls must be careful not to send their naked pictures to social media boyfriends and not to give their passwords to others for recharge or megabytes, adding that women and girls should not use simple password numbers or letters. “The essence of doing this is to save you and your personal information including bank details and private conversations”, she noted.

Head teacher of Baptist Convention Primary School in Gloucester Village, Mrs. Safinatu appreciated the digital safety initiative, thanking Ms. Christiana for her philanthropic ambition. She promised that they as Community stakeholders will work together to make sure the initiative continues in the community where pupils and teachers would serve as ambassadors.

Felicia Moseray a class six thanks Ms. Sagba for the digital training and also promised that she will help sensitize her peer group on the positive and negative use of the internet.

One of the participants from Church of Christ Primary School,Janet Dumbuya promised that she will deliver what she has leartn during the program to her fellow teachers and pupils to help spread the good news.

Admonishing parents, Ms. Sagba said parents should be best friends to their kids. “There must be open communication among them, and parents/guidance must stop letting their kids watch Nigerian & Ghanaian movies”.

She recommended cartoon and other kids’ movies, adding that “kids must be kids, our kids should use the internet for educational materials, not for pornography or other harmful things that have the tendency to endanger their future”, she ended.