“Be.Safe” – online safety for people with intellectual disabilities

Searching for information, reading the news, using social media to stay in touch with friends: More and more people with intellectual disabilities surf the internet and enjoy being included online. Most of the time, they do so without any incidents. There is however the risk for people using the Internet to become victims of cybercrime.

The project “Be.Safe”, financed by the Erasmus+ Adult Education Programme, aims to address this risk: The initiative, launched by a number of European partners including Inclusion Europe, will develop curricula for training courses

• for teachers in adult education: to enable them to mainstream information about cyber violence into their educational programmes and
• for persons with intellectual disability: to empower them to stay safe online.

Two 5-day courses will be conducted – one in Portugal, one in Poland.

Additionally, a digital guide for police will be created that can help with communication with a person with an intellectual disability, for example if he or she wants to press charges.

The project will be carried out by a partnership lead by Inclusion Europe’s member PSONI (Poland). Other partners include Inclusion Europe’s member Inclusion Czech Republic, the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém (Portugal) and the Regional Centre for Persons with Intellectual Disability PORAKA NASA (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

As a first step, the project partners will collect case studies gathering real-life examples of situations in which persons with intellectual disabilities became victims of cyber violence. These will be the basis for the development of the curricula and training materials.