Click-of cyber violence against women and girls

Organisation

• Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (Ministrstvo za Delo, Družino, Socialne Zadeve in Enake Možnosti).
• Faculty of Social Sciences (Fakulteta za Družbene Vede).
• Ministry of the Interior – the police (Ministrstvo za Notranje Zadeve – Policija).
• Ministry of Justice – Judicial Training Centre (Ministrstvo za Pravosodje – Center za Izobraževanje v Pravosodju).

Start and end date

Start date:

 1 July 2017.

End date:

31 December 2019.

Scope

National and local levels.

Target group(s)

• Professionals in schools (teachers, principals and school counsellors, e.g. psychologists and social workers), police and justice professionals (prosecutors, judges and other court personnel) and non-governmental organisations (working with youth and in the area of violence against women).
• Young people, girls and boys aged 12–19 ((potential) victims, groups at risk), (potential) perpetrators, (potential) witnesses and parents.
• National policymakers, journalists and media professionals.
• The general public, in particular young women (aged 12–30).

Funding

Funded with EU funds (Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme) and the state budget.

Objectives

• Raise awareness; combat gender stereotypes; and prevent, reduce and change attitudes towards cyber violence and harassment against girls and women (hereafter cybercrime) in Slovenia.
• Increase the sensitivity and knowledge of young people, (potential) victims, groups at risk, parents, (potential) perpetrators and witnesses about the issue.
• Build the capacity of relevant professionals to ensure adequate prevention of, prosecution of and protection against cybercrime.

Outputs

• Awareness-raising materials: a mobile app Click-Off, a dedicated website, video clips, posters, a leaflet and various promotional materials, including notebooks, USB sticks, backpacks and folders.
• Capacity-building tools on how to address safety on the internet from a gender-sensitive perspective, targeted at various groups. These included recommendations for policymakers and the media; guidelines for police and justice professionals; a handbook for professionals who work with children; and a trainers kit for professionals working with youth.
• Targeted social media engagement on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube.

Description

The project aimed to raise awareness about gender stereotypes and sexism online and change attitudes towards the prevention and elimination of cybercrime. Activities included the development of awareness-raising and capacity-building tools.

Capacity-building tools for a gender-sensitive approach to the prevention of cybercrime were targeted at young people, policymakers, the media, youth workers, trainers, teachers and other school workers, social workers, non-governmental organisations, and police and justice professionals. Through training sessions, professionals gained the knowledge and skills to address the issue of cyber violence against women and girls in their daily work and to adequately handle cases and provide support to victims of such violence. They were equipped with tools to ensure that their working practices would be less gender blind, which contributed to better working results and ensured that both sexes could benefit from their work equally. Through workshops for young people, primary school pupils and secondary school students were made aware of and educated about cybercrime, its forms and consequences, ways to address and prevent it, and where to go for help and report it. In addition, a trainers kit that contained a lesson plan and an educational module was developed and made available to schools and youth workers so that they could continue to educate young people about these topics.

The mobile app Click-Off was developed as a learning tool for young people, (potential) victims, groups at risk, parents, (potential) perpetrators and witnesses. It is the first app of its kind to be developed in Slovenia. It provides, among other things, measures for improving online security and safety and steps for dealing with cyber violence and abuse through the use of articles, videos and quizzes.

Critical success factors

• Baseline research: first national survey to systematically assess cyber violence among youth as a form of violence against women. The attitudes, experiences and knowledge of more than 5,000 Slovenian youth (12–19 years old) were assessed.
• Wide-ranging outreach work: through 180 workshops, 3,349 primary and secondary school pupils were made aware of and educated about cyber violence against women and girls, its forms and consequences, ways to address and prevent it, and where to go for help and to report it.
• Building capacity: teachers and other school workers, youth and social workers gained knowledge of how to address and tackle cybercrime from a gender-sensitive perspective. A practical tool for professionals working with youth (trainers kit containing a lesson plan and an educational module) was developed for implementing workshops and discussing the topic among primary and high school students.
• Building capacity: an online learning tool in the form of a mobile app was developed to contribute to awareness raising and the dissemination of knowledge about cybercrime among young people and their parents. The app also supplements the educational module for the implementation of workshops in schools and other in-school awareness-raising activities on cyber violence.
• Building capacity: with the prepared set of recommendations, media professionals and policymakers gained knowledge on how to represent and address the issue of safety on the internet from a gender-sensitive perspective to make the internet a safer place for women and girls.
• Building capacity: police and justice professionals gained knowledge on how to work together to better detect, investigate and prosecute cybercrime against girls and women, and provide assistance and support to victims of this type of violence.
• Awareness-raising: through various awareness-raising activities, the important message was communicated that cyber violence is a form of violence against women and that positive change will be achieved by seeing abuse for what it is, the responsibility of the perpetrator. The feedback was positive, and the message was well received.

Actors involved in the design and implementation of the practice

Activities were developed with the participation of civil society organisations.

Monitoring and evaluation

During the project implementation phase, an internal evaluation was conducted. The evaluation was split into several phases: (1) monitoring, (2) outcome evaluation and (3) impact evaluation. The evaluation is presented at http://odklikni.enakostspolov.si/.

• Activity monitoring reports monitored the implementation of the project and outlined its progress towards reaching its goals and objectives. During the first phase, the indicators established in the project were monitored, and evaluations of workshops, training, events and conferences were conducted. According to the evaluations conducted, all the events were successful (in terms of participant satisfaction) (the average satisfaction rating of all events was around 4.4 (on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 was unsatisfactory and 5 was highly satisfied)). Surveys among youth were conducted (students in grades 7–9 of primary school and grades 1–4 of secondary school). A survey was carried out at the beginning of the project in which more than 5,000 students were included. The survey was also the first survey in Slovenia that systematically researched cyber violence among youth, and their attitudes to and experiences and knowledge of the topic. The second survey was repeated after the workshops and included 1,373 students, which enabled any changes in behaviour in students who attended the workshops to be observed.
• For the outcome evaluation and impact evaluation phases, we used several methods – focus groups, interviews, evaluation forms and surveys.

Publicly available contact details

Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities
Website