New funding to end online exploitation of children

The Young and Resilient Research Centre, in partnership with Save the Children Hong Kong, has successfully secured $198,600 from the Tech Coalition Safe Online Fund, to embark on a new project to tackle online child exploitation and abuse by providing applicable solutions for the tech industry.

Our project aims to understand how diverse children recognise, experience and respond to online grooming and solicitation to engage them in online sexual exploitation and abuse. To do so, we’ll capture the insights of 660 participants aged 9-16, across six countries in four regions; Columbia, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Finland.

The research findings will offer actionable recommendations to tech companies to implement effective policies to prevent and respond to online child grooming. We have built a coalition of leading technology company experts, who will actively participate in and champion this research. Our industry panel members include representatives from Snap, Meta, Apple, Yubo, Microsoft and TikTok (with more to come).

Our project is one of eight projects that won grants from Tech Coalition’s $1 million funding pool, that has been allocated to investigate this pressing issue from various aspects, covering all regions around the world. The funding is part of Tech Coalition’s End Violence Safe Online initiative that invests in research to end online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA).

Congratulations to our researchers and Save the Children! Stay tuned to hear more about this research project.

More information about the grants here.