Policy Maker Factsheet

What is HUWY?

HUWY is a pilot project, which aims to get young people talking about policies and laws which affect the Internet and channel their ideas to policy makers in governments and parliaments, on national and EU-level. HUWY pilots a distributed discussion model to achieve this, with people exploring and discussing the themes in their own online and offline spaces.

We would like to welcome you to the team of policy makers, who read, use and comment on young people’s ideas and propositions.

Why are we doing this?

Young people, who have been on the Internet all their lives, have a different experience of it to older people and a certain expertise. We want to support this generation to have more say in what the Internet is and what it should be and we hope that everybody (including you) is ready to listen and discuss their ideas. We hope that you will help by giving feedback on young people’s ideas and that their ideas will inspire your work. We believe that the distributed discussion model will bring new blood to policy making, helping to gather opinions of those already chatting online and channel them into formats you can use.

How does HUWY work?

We ask young people and youth organisations to consider certain Internet problems that they have identified and come up with ideas and suggestions. We work with you and other policy makers to organise these ideas in ways that are useful to you. We would like you to consider these ideas and give feedback on their usefulness.

Essentially, we are asking you to listen to what young people have to say about the Internet. We hope that their ideas will help you to formulate policies that support the use of the Internet by all generations including the young “digital natives”.

To make this happen we have prepared special Hub websites for collecting and organising young people’s ideas. There is a Hub for each country involved in the project HUWY (UK, Ireland, Germany and Estonia) and an EU Hub. Each Hub has information to support discussions, results from young people and feedback from policy-makers.

We are also running workshops with young people in each country.

Discussion Themes

We’ve worked with young people to identify the topics which concern them and added File-sharing, as it’s currently a hot topic for policy-makers:

• Cyber bullying
• Child abuse
• ID theft, privacy and phishing
• File-sharing.

We’ve collected some information on these topics on the Hubs to inspire young people and support constructive discussions. However, there is also an open theme, where young people can give their opinion on other topics as well.

What do you actually want me to do?

1. Your attention and feedback is key to the success of HUWY. We believe that young people have something useful to contribute and we ask you to look at their ideas and comment on them. Choose the topic which is most related to your responsibilities and interests. Read the ideas with an open mind for information and ideas. Get in touch with us to register
2. Read young people’s ideas on topics that you’re involved in
3. If possible, use the ideas or forward them to people working on relevant policies
4. Provide feedback on the ideas.

If you know other policy-makers working these areas, please forward this to them.

Who are HUWY?

HUWY is an e-participation pilot project, sponsored by the European Commission

Partners:

Edinburgh Napier University, Queens University Belfast, Dog Digital and Ministry of Justice, UK

Tartu University, State Chancellory, Estonia

Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Germany

Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Mr Pat the Cope Gallagher MEP, Youth Work Ireland, Republic of Ireland

Additional information details are only given for one country, not all.

For more information about the HUWY project in general contact Ella Taylor-Smith: e.taylor-smith@napier.ac.uk

UK: For more information about HUWY UK, please contact Feargal O’Kane: f.okane@qub.ac.uk

Ireland: For more information about HUWY in Ireland, please contact Paul McCusker: Paul.McCusker@lyit.ie

Estonia: For more information about HUWY in Estonia, please contact Triin Visnapuu: triin.visnapuu@ut.ee

Germany: For more information about HUWY in Germany, please contact Ralf Lindner: Ralf.Lindner@isi.fraunhofer.de

For more information about HUWY in general please contact the coordinator Ella Taylor-Smith: e.taylor-smith@napier.ac.uk