About BIK
Under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), EUN Partnership aisbl (hereinafter called European Schoolnet) is developing and maintaining – on behalf of the European Commission – a Better Internet for Kids (BIK) core service platform to share resources, services and practices between national providers of the services – the European Safer Internet Centres (SICs) – and to provide services to their users, including industry.
In line with the European Commission’s Better Internet for Kids strategy, the key vision behind the BIK core service platform is to create a better internet for children and young people. In more practical terms, it is our mission is to foster – through the BIK core service platform – the exchange of knowledge, expertise, resources and best practices between key online safety stakeholders, including industry, in order to increase access to high-quality content for children and young people, step up awareness and empowerment, create a safe environment for children online, and fight against child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation.
More specifically, the BIK core service platform environment contains the following key components:
BIK Portal: This public-facing web platform provides a central point of access for the wider stakeholders and the general public for information, guidance and resources on better internet issues, acting as a signposting service to SICs, and other stakeholder content and services where appropriate. Specific content and services are also provided and delivered through the site such as the BIK Bulletin (an electronic quarterly bulletin, disseminated via email but archived on the site), a Guide to online services, a repository of eSafety resources, and so on.
BIK Community: This private community for Insafe-INHOPE Safer Internet Centres – available upon registration and sign-in only – includes a range of collaborative capacity-building tools which facilitate the exchange of knowledge, ideas, expertise and best practices. The results of ongoing work on this internal community are rolled out both through various targeted channels on the public-facing portal and via other communication channels.
BIK Youth area: The BIK Youth area provides a secure, moderated, collaborative space for youth participation interactions at national, European and international level, where youth have access to their own capacity-building tools, and can meet with youth coordinators from their national Safer Internet Centre to discuss, debate and share ideas, resources, and so forth.
SID mini-site: The SID portal, available at www.saferinternetday.org, is integrated as a mini-site into the BIK core service platform infrastructure, and it provides a global platform where SICs, global SID Committees and supporters, and international organisations (i.e. SID stakeholders) can showcase events and actions conducted locally, nationally and internationally for Safer Internet Day.
Furthermore, European Schoolnet closely collaborates with the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) in order to coordinate and animate the European network of Safer Internet Centres, each focusing on their respective strands of work (i.e. awareness, youth participation and helpline versus hotline), as well as to externally represent the Better Internet for Kids agenda and European Safer Internet Centres, reaching out to policy makers, industry, teachers, parents, young people and children both through the BIK core service platform and through the participation in and organisation of meetings, campaigns and events.
For further information on the BIK project generally, contact the BIK Coordination Team.
About our partners
Safer Internet is a well-established, multi-stakeholder domain, involving the public sector, technology and media industry and civil society (mainly NGOs). Complementary to the EU-level core services, Safer Internet Centres maintain their own national platforms, providing:
An awareness centre for informing children, their parents and teachers about better and safer use of the internet, building on enhanced digital resource centres (repositories), from which specific awareness toolkits and services are adapted and deployed, in cooperation with third parties (schools, industry).
Helpline services providing information, advice and assistance to children, youth and parents on how to deal with harmful or inappropriate content, contact (such as grooming) and conduct such as (cyberbullying or sexting).
A hotline for receiving and managing reports and data on online illegal child sexual abuse.
Content and resources are developed both at European and national levels and shared between SICs through the platform. The three components of the SIC nationally cooperate through an Advisory Board with national stakeholders and actively contribute to the implementation of a European approach by sharing good practices and resources and taking part in European-level events.
For further information on partners by country, please see the Insafe-INHOPE section of this website.
For further information on the BIK project generally, contact the BIK Coordination Team.