After the success of the Volunteer Meeting last July, Circles Europe were delighted to hold their fifth online mini-conference.
The theme of the conference was Online Sexual Abuse and Circles Europe welcomes staff and volunteers from across several countries; including the UK, the Netherlands, Latvia and even as far afield as Canada.
The conference saw two speakers present recent projects; Liz Hickey from Circles UK spoke to the group about Circles ReBoot – a new Circles programme for People who access Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSEM). The presentation included how the programme was developed, the pilot implementation and the evaluation findings.
The new project garnered a lot of interest from countries who are currently only running traditional adult community circles.
You can read more about ReBoot Circles here.
The second speaker was Dr. Jorge Ramiro Pérez Suárez from the University of Madrid. He presented a session on Young people, Risk, Social media and Dating apps: Methodological innovations for the study of violence and sexual violence online.
Jorge presented findings of 4 studies carried out in Spain and talked of the changing ways in which young people use social media, the difference in dating practices in different generations and new media that is shaping the way young people communicate.
We hope as a group we can follow the research as it continues.
The session then moved on to an open discussion for Circles Volunteers sharing experiences of being a Circles volunteer in the various European countries. Idea sharing is one of the most valuable parts of these get-togethers and particularly enjoyable for the participants.
Article from Circles South West: here