Participants during the Vodafone Qatar “Connected Families” workshop at Qatar Foundation Recreation Center yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula
Vodafone recently held a “Connected Families” workshop at Qatar Foundation Recreation Centre, to help parents gain confidence in allowing their children to access the Internet safely.
Vodafone organised the workshop for three schools that operate under the umbrella of Qatar Foundation’s Pre-University Education- Qatar Academy Doha, Qatar Academy Sidra and Awsaj Academy, which benefited from the workshop.
This comes as part of Vodafone’s AmanTech online safety programme, which aims to empower parents and support them in equipping their children with the right tools to navigate the digital world.
Talking to The Peninsula, Fahad Abood Al Saiari (pictured), CSR Manager at Vodafone Qatar said: “AmanTech is a part of our CSR initiative, we take it as our responsibility to make society aware about how to use technology in the safest way. We have a platform (website) for parents on which all the information is available to guide them in order to understand their children more which includes, to understand Internet safety, protect their reputation, how to deal with cyber bullying and keep a positive self-image in the huge world of technology. We organise these workshops for parents to get comfortable and learn the technology without hesitations.”
The ‘Connected Families’ workshops are short events that use interactive activity stations to explore important topics like cyber bullying, online gaming and different approaches to digital parenting. The events provide a great opportunity for parents to come together to ask questions, share experiences and learn more about Internet safety. Each workshop runs for two hours with attendees rotating between the different stations.
“Across the Vodafone Group, we have a wealth of experience in developing industry-leading initiatives to help parents and children navigate the online world. We are committed to ensuring that children are given the opportunity to make the most of communication technologies for their development while also instilling healthy online habits. We want to ensure parents are well equipped and prepared to keep up with what their children are doing online,” said Al Yami, Director of External Affairs at Vodafone Qatar.
The workshop included four stations for parents, first one was named as ‘Digital Dilemmas’ which helped parents to acknowledge themselves as a digital parent, second was ‘Parental Priorities’ in which parents identified critical online-safety issues, third was ‘Digital Tech at home’ which guided the parents who to keep children safe in the digital world and lastly ‘Online Gaming’ which was a station on which parents were told about the online games they children play despite their ages.
Paul Nery, Primary School principal said, at Qatar Academy Doha: “I believe Internet security and safety are extremely important issues for today’s parents to understand, without them our children can be exposed to serious safety issues. As parents, without safeguards, we may not have any ideas about what our children may be viewing or how they may be “groomed” or made vulnerable to very bad influences.”
Dr. Donald Francis, Director, Awsaj Academy, said: “Such workshops are a great opportunity for our parents. As a part of our team, we are excited that parents have this educational opportunity regarding electronic learning and safety so we can all support our students on how to safely navigate the Internet and counter cyber bullying and be 21st century ready.”
AmanTech works through a three-pronged approach to reach out to parents and children aged between 5 and 17 with a focus on awareness, education and technical support. The AmanTech program includes ongoing workshops, an online source for information and tips for parents [www.vodafone.qa/AmanTECH], where online magazines and a digital parenting guide is also available.
