Country of Residence
United States
Age
15
Project title
The Safe Link
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
The Safe Link is a youth-led nonprofit initiative dedicated to preventing online child exploitation, especially sextortion, through digital safety education and community-focused outreach.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
www.thesafelink.com
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Growth (We’ve moved past the very first activities and are beginning to have consistent weekly or monthly impact)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
I am a survivor of online child sextortion, and I've seen firsthand how devastating this form of violence can be. When I was in fifth grade, I was blackmailed for months for explicit photos of my body, as well as all of my personal info, by a stranger online. Through it all, I was forced to keep our relationship secret from my family and friends, and I suffered from extreme depression and anxiety. Eventually (thankfully!), my parents found out, and they guided me to ignore the guy's threats and block and report him instead. I can confidently say that thanks to them, I'm in a much better place today; but even now, I still do worry if my photos are still circulating online; how someone out there knows where I live and can find me easily; and how, unfortunately, the police never came to any clear follow-up. When the situation was first resolved, my ten-year-old self guarded the secret fiercely. Understandably, I was too filled with shame and disgust to tell any of my friends what had happened to me. But years later, I began to realize that there are more important things in this world than the little bit of fear I have left. One of those is the well-being of other children. I realized that I could tell my story and use my experience to help those kids stay safe online and feel less alone in whatever they are going through. That realization was the spark for The Safe Link.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
The Safe Link addresses the issue of online child exploitation, especially sextortion. This is a huge and growing issue in our world today, with everything becoming increasingly digital and even new technologies like AI. In fact, according to Childlight in 2024, over 300 million children a year experience technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse. Unfortunately, many children today simply don't know what sextortion is or how to handle it. In fact, when I look back on my own experience, I realize that my parents had always talked to me about basic online safety (like scammers and suspicious links), but concepts like 'sextortion' had always been uncomfortable and off-limits. As a result, when it happened to me, I had no idea what I was dealing with or how to respond. Before I started The Safe Link, I asked around in my circle of friends if any of them knew was sextortion was. I was shocked to find out that not a single one had ever heard of it before. Later on, I spoke with a former dean at my school, and he revealed that during his time at Mitty, he had seen countless cases of sextortion. In nearly all of those cases, neither the students nor the parents knew how to handle it because they had never received the proper education and resources to do so. These conversations all point to an important gap that I hope to address through The Safe Link!
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
First, I host workshops for students and parents at schools, libraries, and nonprofit organizations. These workshops use personal storytelling and real-life examples to explain what online sextortion is and how it works, how to recognize warning signs of online exploitation, how to respond safely to potentially dangerous situations, and where to find resources for support. I've been lucky to have received help from experts at EnoughAbuse and specialists from my local police department to review and improve our curriculum. Second, I'm training a network of youth ambassadors across the country through a train-the-trainer program that gives other high schoolers knowledge, resources, and continued guidance and support to become peer educators and bring digital safety education into their own communities. This way, we can build relationships within individual schools, reach more students through peer-to-peer education, and encourage them to take a more active role in online exploitation prevention. Third, I lead a variety of other digital safety projects, including tabling and awareness campaigns. I'm working with EnoughAbuse to create training videos for high school students and parents, FOSI to create an online blog and resource kit for families, ConnectSafely as a speaker on their podcast and upcoming panels, and Splicer Films to create a short documentary about sextortion and the work that organizations like The Safe Link are doing in our communities. I'm also conducting research with Dr. Kay Coghill of Virginia Commonwealth University and Dr. Melissa Brown of SCU on how immigration background may influence perceptions of and responses to online harassment. This is helping me better understand different perspectives and how to address them through education!
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Although The Safe Link has been active for just over a year, we've already presented to nearly fifty parents and students and distributed over thirty handouts including digital safety red flags, support resources, and parenting tips. We've also trained a network of youth ambassadors across six schools and four states and established connections with ten schools and school districts, like Palo Alto and MVLA. Feedback from post-workshop surveys from twenty-eight parent and student respondents has been overwhelmingly positive: 100% of surveyed parents and students said they felt confident recognizing and responding to online sextortion afterward, and 95% of surveyed students reported feeling more confident than before the workshop. 90% of students rated the workshop 4 or 5 out of 5 for usefulness, and 100% of parents and students said they would recommend the workshop to a friend. One parent said, "I really had no idea about any of this, and I'm so glad that I'm more informed now. I liked the way that Cynthia provided information, but also had questions to help the audience apply the ideas." A student wrote, "I learned so much about how to prevent it and how to support others around us if something like this comes up. I never knew how common it was in our world today." Moving forward, I hope to continue to expand our workshops and ambassador network to reach more families!
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
While programs and solutions hyperfocused on online child exploitation and sextortion are not especially common to begin with, The Safe Link is particularly unique because every single presenter is a youth. This provides a valuable perspective that traditional adult-led education may not have. In student workshops, for example, we're able to very honestly acknowledge some of the social and practical fears that other people our age may have about blocking or reporting online perpetrators, whether it be a stranger or someone they're in a romantic relationship with. I've found that in general, a lot of students are more attentive and receptive to presentations delivered by their peers, because it feels more relatable and real rather than "just another adult lecture from someone who thinks they know better than us." In our parent workshops, we can explain, from our lived experiences and the perspective of "the other side" of their parent-child relationships, how important it is that they maintain a healthy balance between protective and overbearing. We want parents to understand that their daily attitudes and reactions can influence whether their kids feel safe coming to them for help if something like sextortion does happen, and that device restrictions and prevention measures alone can never replace the importance of trust and open communication. The Safe Link's curriculum is informed by my own survivor experience. I tell my own story from start to finish and incorporate it into interactive activities and examples, including a workshop with (a heavily abbreviated and censored version of) my real texts with the perpetrator. Many students have said that these personal details make the topic feel far more proximate and engaging!
How many people are on your team?
8
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
My team members are ambassadors who plan and lead local projects, including workshops and awareness events, in their own schools and communities. We all regularly sync up over Zoom for a monthly check-in, and we share our accomplishments last month, goals for next month, and any obstacles or fun new ideas we encountered. Ambassadors also help out and collaborate with each other for online projects, such as developing branded resource kits. Our ambassador team is always growing!
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next year, I hope to expand The Safe Link's reach through new partnerships, more workshops, and youth-led initiatives. I'm currently planning a variety of projects with fourteen different schools and nonprofit organizations, including six upcoming workshops and a panel this fall. I mentioned many of these briefly in previous answers, but one example of an upcoming project is our partnership with Splicer Films, through which we are creating a short film about sextortion. I hope to use this in outreach to schools and community organizations to introduce our mission, raise awareness about sextortion, and create opportunities for future workshops. Meanwhile, our youth ambassadors are planning initiatives in their own schools and libraries, with each ambassador aiming to lead at least one workshop per semester. I am checking in and supporting them along these goals while continuing to grow our network of youth leaders. I've also recently connected with local PTA and CSE networks, which are some new potential avenues to reach parents and students that I'm excited to explore! Over the next year, I'll build on these relationships, reach out to new partners, and continue developing ways to bring our education to more young people and families. Eventually, I plan to branch into legislation and researching broader, policy-level change regarding online child exploitation.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
I encourage people to join The Safe Link through partnerships or our youth ambassador network. I recruit ambassadors through student leaders I know or meet through different programs, as well as students who discover our website and apply through the online form. Once they join, ambassadors can lead initiatives in their own schools and communities and recruit their own friends and peers there to help them. For people interested in learning more about sextortion, I love talking with attendees who come up to me after workshops to ask additional questions and share their ideas. I've had parents ask which other organizations they could support, whether I'd be willing to present at their children's schools, and how they could help with outreach for future workshops. These conversations often open doors to new audiences and partnerships. I also want everyone who encounters The Safe Link to leave better informed about both online child explitation and how to get involved or help out!
