Dr. Bernadette Madrid (with micrphone), executive director of the Child Protection Network, explains the Ako Para sa BATA conference with Fr. Fidel Orendan, SDB; Dr. Naomi Navarro-Poca, child protection specialist at Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Pink Center and Dr. Emma Llanto, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine in a press conference. (CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON)
Cyberprotection of children is the main theme of a two-day international conference that opens today in Cebu City.
The challenge of dealing with today’s “cyber culture,” where the wide use of the Internet and mobile devices provides endless entertainment but also makes youths vulnerable to abuse, will be tackled by the conference “Ako Para sa Bata” (I am for the child) at the Marco Polo Plaza.
About 500 stakeholders – government officials, law enforcers, social workers, and educators – will gather today for the Dec. 1-2 forum to intensify a campaign against online abuses.
“This is a coming together of minds,” said Dr. Emma Llanto, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH).
“It takes a whole village to protect our children. We have agencies involved, like doctors and police, which expands what happens in a child protection network,” she said in Sunday’s press conference.
Plenary sessions this morning will give an overview of cyberculture, and both domestic and global data on online child abuse and exploitation.
Unicef research on online child protection will be presented.
Topics on cyberbullying, online solicitation and pornography will also be discussed today.
Tomorrow, sessions will be held on the challenges of cyberculture on education and the Filipino family, brain development of the young, good parenting in the cyberage, efforts to fight online child abuse, as well as Internet addiction, “sexting”, and other risky online behavior will be taken up.
“There is a common notion, that online abuse is okay because there’s no touching involved but we should understand that even though there is no physical contact, the effect is more devastating. It can be multiplied, it can be shared and once it (the content) is there on the Internet, you can never pull it out,” said Llanto.
Fr. Fidel Orendain, SDB, said the conference will also tackle laws against cybercrime which need to be upgraded.
“We have presented this to City Councils in Cebu. Most of them said that ordinances on this were already written three years ago but three years of cyberlife is already ancient. There will be new realities. Cyberreality is evolving.
We should catch up and even be ahead of it,” said the Don Bosco priest.
He cited one ordinance in Lapu-Lapu City, which declares it illegal for a minor to be spending time in Internet cafés during class hours. Orendain said what needs to be addressed is not class hours spent in Internet shops but the quality of adult online information children are now consuming.