$10 Million Global Call for Solutions to tackle Online Child Sexual Exploitation & Abuse

Deadline: 31-Oct-23

Safe Online is excited to announce a new USD 10 Million Global open call for proposals to continue laying the groundwork for a safe internet globally in line with the latest data and evidence from the field, technology developments and relevant frameworks addressing digital harms to children.

With this new Open Call, Safe Online continues investing in a ‘whole system’ approach for maximum impact by supporting the work across multiple sectors in a coordinated manner to advance solutions to address online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) and related forms of harms to children. The investment approach builds on the vast amount of knowledge generated through Safe Online’s investments, as well as the latest data and evidence in the field and wider digital harms ecosystem.

This new Open Call promotes innovative approaches and seeks proposals addressing under-served areas, the specific needs of survivors and of the most vulnerable groups of children and young people. This will include funding the development of gender sensitive (including boys) and inclusive programmes, solutions, policies, services, regulation, research, and technology tools.

With this new USD 10 Million Global Open Call for Proposals, Safe Online will establish three interconnected standing investment pillars under which it will source projects in the years to come. The three investment pillars are:

• Networks & Systems
• Research & Data
• Technology Tools

Main Objectives and Focus Areas

• Networks and Systems
  • The primary focus of this investment pillar is to strengthen country-level capacity, cross-sector collaboration and international cooperation building on existing multi-stakeholder frameworks and networks, and in alignment with national, regional and global efforts tackling other forms of violence against children and interrelated digital crimes. The aim is to enable more effective and coordinated prevention and response to harms to children and young people in digital environments, with a particular focus on the worst forms namely online CSEA and other existing or emerging forms of online violence against children and young people.
  • In line with a ‘whole system approach’ and building on the latest evidence and data efforts including Disrupting Harm’s findings and the Safe Digital Futures: Data for Change initiative, Safe Online invites proposals for projects aimed at strengthening national, regional and global systems to combat online violence against children through targeted measures to achieve one or more of the following main objectives:
    • Strengthen national, regional and global infrastructure to effectively tackle digital harms to children with a survivor-centred, inclusive and gender-sensitive approach (including boys) through coordinated law enforcement, criminal justice and social care capacity as a necessary precursor to awareness raising and survivor support.
    • Prevent victimisation and strengthen survivors’ support via improving early intervention and assisting in recovery through increased child-participation, coordinated and consistent services, and trauma-informed, well-trained personnel across institutions working on preventative and response services.
  • 2023 areas of interest
    • Systematised and coordinated approaches to law enforcement capacity building and innovative approaches to ensure meaningful child participation.
    • Specific needs of child survivors of online violence and of professionals directly working on online CSEA and other forms of digital harms to children, including trauma-informed services.
• Research and Data
  • The primary focus of this investment pillar is to bring clarity on the scale and nature of digital harms to children as well as the needs, gaps and solutions to inform coordinated efforts at national, regional and global levels. Despite the understanding that children’s experiences are frequently in interaction with and mediated by digital technologies – there is a lack of reliable, comparable and comprehensive data to understand children’s experiences in digital environments, to quantify and contextualise technology-facilitated risks, and to capture the scale and nature of harms. This makes it difficult to prevent, disrupt and respond to situations of abuse and exploitation.
  • More specifically, investments under this pillar aim to generate data and evidence on the threats and emerging trends related to children’s safety in digital environments – for example offenders’ behaviour, prevention strategies, children’s experiences in the digital world, solutions to guide collective efforts, etc. – across three areas of interventions:
    • prevention and deterrence
    • detection and reporting, and
    • response and support.
  • 2023 areas of interest
    • Technology facilitated risks and harms to children in humanitarian contexts and during conflicts and crisis, including children on the move.
    • Gender-based risks and harms, including for boys, facilitated by technologies.
• Technology Tools
  • The main objective of this investment pillar is to support technology tools to seed and grow innovative solutions that leverage existing and new technologies to improve prevention, detection and response to digital harms against children, and its worst forms namely online CSEA. Safe Online will invest in solutions that use technology in innovative and ground-breaking ways and that are scalable. These could address for example  detection and removal of child abuse material (CSAM) and grooming, prevention of live-streaming of abuse, age appropriate design, open-source platforms for making the helpline ecosystem more efficient, law enforcement investigative tools (e.g. leading to shorter investigation times, increase in the capacities for victim identification), offenders deterrence behaviour, and education and prevention tools helping children learn how to recognise online risks and protect themselves, among others. Clearly defined technological solutions they will fund include:
    • Design of a proof of concept that demonstrates an innovative use of technology to address a specific challenge with clear plans for further research and testing;
    • Development of new prototypes or products – including hardware/software/content components – or of new features within existing products or tools; and,
    • Adaptation or combination of existing tools to address current gaps, increase efficacy and/or effectiveness, or apply to new use cases.
  • 2023 areas of interest
    • Future-proofing considerations around new technology and emerging trends in tech industry practice as well as offending, including encryption, livestreaming, generative AI, immersive technologies, distributed web and financial aspects of online CSEA crime.
    • Increased inclusion and representativeness of training data and access to relevant datasets for training, validation and scaling of tools

Cross-Cutting Topics

These cross-cutting topics were identified as in need of attention in each investment pillar due to lack of specific research, evidence, strategies and interventions as well as the overarching opportunity to address the specific needs of survivors and of the most vulnerable groups of children and youth. Topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Children facing multiple risk factors including children with disabilities, children living in high-risk settings or facing gender-based risks and harms (including boys) facilitated by technology – e.g. informal communities, refugee camps, institutions, in contact with the law, street-connected, etc.
• Evidence informed prevention targeting offenders, children and parents with priority given to innovative approaches or those building on evidence of ‘what works’ from related areas of work.
• Innovative models to support and empower experts at local level on prevention, technology, social media, child participation, youth outreach and other relevant areas to build their capacity to tackle digital harms to children and its worst forms namely online CSEA.
• Intersections with broader relevant agendas such as Cybersecurity, Digitalisation, Human Trafficking, Gender-based Violence, Image Based Sexual Abuse, Digital Human Rights etc.
• Implications of new and evolving technology on trends in offending and children’s experiences.
• Other areas flagged as relevant and/or priority by applicants based on evidence.

Funding Information

• Grant duration: Maximum 2 years
• Proposal budget:
  • Non-profits (Networks & Systems): up to USD 750K
  • Non-profits (Research & Data): up to USD 250K
  • Non-profits (Technology Tools): up to USD 300K
  • For-profits (all Safe Online pillars): up to USD 250K

Geographical Targeting: Global

Eligibility Criteria

Only entities that fulfill these mandatory requirements will be considered eligible:

• Your organisation is a legally registered entity within the country or countries of implementation. In addition to this, letters of support from local authorities and organisations will also be required.
• Your organisation is able to provide previous auditing records or a micro-assessment.
• The proposed project aligns with at least one of the main objectives, modalities and areas of the investment pillars set in this call.
• Funds must not be for an organisation’s core funding, cost of infrastructure, general awareness campaigns, stand-alone research and data collection, activities where a substantial part of the budget is allocated for travel or conferences.
• Your organisation has a safeguarding policy in place (including data privacy) or is willing to develop a policy. Budget for safeguarding activities up to 5% of the total direct costs.
• Your organisation is able to demonstrate a track record of implementing similar projects in similar contexts (Applicable only for the Investment Pillar A: ”Networks and Systems”).
• Organisations applying for transnational projects shall demonstrate a track record of success delivering activities to prevent and tackle online CSEA regionally and internationally (at least three projects) (Applicable only for the Investment Pillar A: ”Networks and Systems”).

For more information, visit Safe Online.