Fact sheet for young people, youth groups and facilitators

Do you worry about things like cyberbullying and phishing?
Do you know your rights on file-sharing and privacy?
Do you have ideas to make the Internet a better place?

Join young people across Europe to let the politicians know what you think and how you feel.

WHAT is HUWY?

HUWY is a European project that aims to involve young people in making policies and laws which affect the Internet both on national and international level.

WHY HUWY?

People who have been on the Internet all their lives (young people) have a different experience of it to older people and special expertise.

Politicians need to understand your experiences and consider your ideas in order to make policies and laws that will actually work to make the Internet a better place.

HOW does HUWY work?

You get together with your youth group, organisation or friends, where ever you usually talk online (e.g. your group’s forum, blog, Bebo or Facebook) and consider current Internet problems, as they affect you. We’ve put together some stuff to get you started and let you know more about the problems and the current laws. We’ve organised this into 4 topics, plus an open thread:

Cyberbullying
Child abuse
ID theft, privacy and phishing
File-sharing
Open thread

Open thread is where you can choose your own. You’re free to submit your ideas about any topic as long as it’s related to the Internet.

We are organising workshops in UK, Ireland, Estonia and Germany to help you get involved and come up with useful ideas.

Your ideas go on the HUWY Hub websites (like this one), where EU and national politicians, working with HUWY, come and see your ideas and use some of them to make better laws. So, the Hubs are a place where your ideas are channelled to relevant policy-makers and they provide feedback.

There is a Hub for each country involved in HUWY - UK, Ireland, Germany and Estonia - and one for policy makers on the EU level.

You can read more about how HUWY works in about HUWY.

How do I get involved?

Get in touch with us and we’ll get you started.

You’ll need to tell us if you’re part of a youth group or organisation or if you want to get involved with a group of friends or if you want to join another group.

Come to a workshop near you

WHO are HUWY?

We hope that HUWY will be you and young people like you, but in order to start things off, HUWY is sponsored by the European Commission and the organisations running HUWY are:

Edinburgh Napier University, Queens University Belfast, Dog Digital and Ministry of Justice, UK
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and Jugendpresse Deutschland Germany
Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Youth Work Ireland, Mr Pat the Cope Gallagher MEP, Republic of Ireland
Tartu University and State Chancellery of Estonia, Estonia

To get involved, contact Feargal O'Kane f.okane@qub.ac.uk

Results

Groups can finalise their results in the results editing wiki or within their group. The wiki includes templates to help sum things up.

We’re looking for 2 types of results report

Early report –this is about your experiences of the Internet. It may help policy-makers to understand where you are coming from. Many groups will start off discussing their experiences of growing up with the Internet, and what is good and bad about these experiences. It is worth writing up a page on this while it is still fresh in your minds.
Topic report – this is about one of the HUWY topics (e.g. Cyberbullying) or the topic that you’ve chosen yourselves. After you have discussed a topic, there will be something you want to tell people who might do something about it. Put your ideas or worries in a topic report and HUWY will try to make sure that relevant politicians or civil servants read it.

These templates are also provided as word docs: