Sonia Livingstone and Mariya Stoilova have recently been awarded a grant from the LSE Knowledge Exchange Fund for working on Maximising children’s online opportunities and minimising risks for children around the world (MOMRO). This LSE funding will allow them to collaborate with colleagues from UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti and with partners from Argentina, Montenegro, Serbia, South Africa and the Philippines to extend and deepen the knowledge exchange and impact (KEI) from the Global Kids Online research project. MOMRO will involve developing a KEI toolkit for the GKO online platform with existing and new partners specifically designed to maximise opportunities and minimise risks online for children around the world.
Global Kids Online is attracting considerable interest from states, private sector and NGOs, and the pilot research in four countries has already informed the development of national policy and practice. Following the launch of the research toolkit in November 2016, it is vital to sustain and extend the project capacity for cross-national knowledge exchange among present and new partners and to embed the growing evidence base within policy and practice. MOMRO will aim to harness the international potential of the growing evidence-based and child rights approach to maximising opportunities and minimising risks in a fast-expanding, globalising digital environment.
The new funding will be used to exploit the KEI potential of just-completed research, running concurrently with expansion of the research to support the translation of the emerging evidence base into effective policy and child rights solutions, especially in the middle- and low-income countries where children are now gaining internet access. This is consistent with the commitment of the Global Kids online team to an active partnership between central coordinators and national projects, and between researchers and research users/stakeholders.
MOMRO has three objectives that focus on maximising the comparative cross-national knowledge exchange and impact potential of the Global Kids Online research in a sustainable manner:
(1) Identify partner needs and challenges: MOMRO will work with partners to identify bottom up their needs and challenges for exploiting the KEI potential of GKO.
(2) Direct support for KEI for GKO: we will support partners’ efforts to shape practical policy and child rights solutions, as opportunities arise, nationally and cross-nationally.
(3) Creating a KEI toolkit to guide future research partners: Objectives 1 and 2 will generate the case studies and good practice of KEI strategies specific to maximising opportunities and minimising risks online for children for our KEI toolkit for the GKO platform to enable concerted and coordinated action to support a rights-respecting online environment for children globally.
Further information:
You can sign up to receive the latest research news from Global Kids Online by email.
Details about the Global Kids Online project and the work of Sonia Livingstone and Mariya Stoilova
More about the LSE KEI Fund
The GKO impact toolkit can be found here.