BYRON, Ca, #ICANHELP co-founder Kim Karr delivered a powerful presentation on the importance of digital safety to nearly 1,200 students at Discovery Bay Elementary, Timber Point Elementary and Excelsior Middle Schools today.
The presentation highlighted how students and adults can maintain a positive digital footprint and become “Digital First Responders”: people who are prepared to handle cyberbullying, harassment, and other forms of abuse as soon as they arise.
#ICANHELP is an anti-bullying program founded in 2013 by Karr, a former Excelsior Middle School (EMS) PE and Leadership teacher, and Matt Soeth following an incident that targeted a school teacher spread all over social media. The nonprofit corporation works to educate students on the proper use of social media and empowers children, teens, and adults to deal with conflict, negativity, and harassment online.
“We don’t usually think of it, but just like the way negativity can spread, people can be swayed or encouraged when the majority are doing ‘good’ online. Students just need to be shown how to respond to the negativity. We need to empower our future generation to take action against all the issues that are arising with technology,” says Karr. “Through #ICANHELP, students are learning that kindness is saving lives, and it doesn’t have to be anything big — a simple smile or a nice Post-it note on a locker might be all it takes.”
After its founding, Karr continued teaching full time at EMS and giving presentations in schools across the U.S. during her time off. By 2015, the program had grown so much she decided to step back from teaching and focus solely on her mission to erase negativity from the lives of students. Today, Karr and her team go to schools all across the globe and perform interactive assemblies to teach students on how to behave on social media with the ultimate goal of eliminating online negativity and bullying.
Students are the core of the solution to online toxicity, and their help is more crucial than ever in today’s digital world. Karr explains, “#ICANHELP has worked with over four hundred and fifty thousand students to be the digital change they want to see.” The nonprofit’s student-led approach to solving complicated social issues presents students as part of the solution, not the problem. It aims to raise awareness, offer real-world best practices, and celebrate the many examples of students using digital for good.
For more information on #ICANHELP, visit http://www.icanhelp.net.
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