948 SID initiatives in Poland! Decentralised Safer Internet Day approach Each year February marks the start of a very active period for Internet safety in Poland. This year traditionally a central Safer Internet Day event in Warsaw - a press conference with the participation of the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration - launched the SID “general mobilisation” across the country.

Since December 2008 the Polish Safer Internet Node has been active in promoting the event at a local level all around Poland. For the 5^th time already the Polish Node has engaged with local partners to encourage them to undertake Internet safety-related initiatives on the occasion of Safer Internet Day. Already in December a number of SID promotional articles and ads appeared in numerous magazines for educators and SID posters were sent out to hundreds of schools across the country. Also over 200 advertising columns in Warsaw were decorated with SID promotional posters.

On the occasion of Safer Internet Day various organisations and institutions (schools, centres of informal education, libraries with internet access, internet cafes, NGOs working with children, local media) could join in and register their ideas for SID celebrations at the www.dbi.pl website hosted by the Saferinternet.pl team. The most commonly conducted activities featured special internet safety training for children and parents, competitions and quizzes, school theatre performances, happenings, radio broadcasts produced by the students. Many of the actions have been based on the awareness materials made available by the Polish Node (e.g. videos, cartoons, lesson plans, posters).

Since the date of this year’s SID – 10^th February clashed with winter holidays in many parts of Poland the Saferinternet.pl team welcomed the submission of initiatives during the whole month of February. All initiatives registered by the local organisers via www.dbi.pl website can be viewed according to Polish regions. This raises visibility of local activists, enhances their efforts and offers a possibility for partners from the particular region to join forces for any future bigger scale campaign. Additionally showcasing a variety of initiatives undertaken at the local level encourages local journalists to visit and talk directly to the organisers in the region they operate and cover their involvement in the media. In turn the Polish Node, by offering the online platform for all national SID organisers, can gain a valuable insight into what’s going on at the local level and what the needs and expectations of local partners are.

Over the last 5 years a decentralised approach in SID celebrations has proven very successful in engaging a variety of stakeholders in the Safer Internet programme in Poland and for many of them this involvement marked the beginning of regular activities in Internet safety topics in their respective region.

In 2009 the “general SID mobilisation” across Poland has led to 948 registered Safer Internet Day initiatives. Till the end of March all local organisers are expected to send in a report from their local happenings to be able to participate in prize draw for multimedia equipment. Besides all local organisers can receive a certificate of their SID involvement acknowledged by the Saferinternet.pl project.

Safer Internet Day 2009 celebrations in Poland were under the honorary patronage of the Minister of Interior and Administration, Grzegorz Schetyna, the Minister of National Education, Katarzyna Hall and the President of the Office of Electronic Communications, Anna Streżyńska. The main partner of the Safer Internet Day 2009 was the TP Group Foundation.