About 1,100 students from Nguyen Tat Thanh high school and Nam Tu Liem secondary school were trained on digital literacy and online safety in Ha Noi on Saturday.

The event was part of the #ThinkBeforeYouShare online safety programme conducted by the Management and Sustainable Development Institute (MSD) and Facebook in Viet Nam since June this year.

Executive Director of MSD Nguyen Phuong Linh said that for young people, social networking was an indispensable part of daily life. However, to build a positive online community, youths need the right skills to use social media safely.

“With support from Facebook, we have designed a useful programme to help students analyse content on social media and use their own critical thinking and empathy. We expect to create a young digital citizenship generation with sufficient knowledge and skills to ensure their smart and safe social media experience,” said Linh.

“We have been working closely with MSD and our local partners to create educational resources with the aim to build a safe online environment for everyone, particularly youth in Viet Nam. We believe that rolling out the programme to more local schools will help teens in Viet Nam build a positive online community,” said Beth Ann Lim, Head of Community Affairs, APAC, Facebook.

The programme is being rolled out nationwide, targeting 50 secondary and high schools across Viet Nam with the aim to train 50,000 students digital literacy and online safety skills.

As part of the programme, youth leader aged from 18 to 25 will be trained to improve their capacity to become trainers of teenagers from 13 to 18. Through interactive and knowledge sharing activities, the programme helps teens strengthen digital literacy and online safety skills.

Following the launch of #ThinkBeforeYouShare in June, the training programme has reached 12,074 students in 13 schools across four provinces; 116 representatives of NGOs; 135 youth trainers and 23 parents. — VNS