Knowing how to intervene when you see cyber bullying take place, or providing support to those on the receiving end of hurtful messages can be hard - especially when you're a teenager yourself and the abuse might be happening within your social circle.
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But a group of Ballarat secondary students have started the training toward becoming digital ambassadors, equipped with skills to enable them to help others.
About 200 students from nine Ballarat high schools took part in a Project Rockit training course at Loreto College on Tuesday, and will complete another four weeks of online training to become digital ambassadors to tackle cyberbullying and help build a safer and kinder online world.
We want to empower young people to make the right choices online and look after each other.
- Alex Delaney, Project Rockit
Project Rockit head of school growth Alex Delaney said the point of difference between their program and others was "we are young people talking with young people, not at them."
"We want to empower young people to make the right choices online and look after each other," he said.
The Ballarat training day was part of a 40-event national program over the next two years which Project Rockit will deliver thanks to $1 million in funding from Facebook and Instagram.
Following the event, students will plug into an Online Action Hub where they will connect with a powerful network of peers and access leadership tools help them kick start social change in their own schools.
"The issues that young people are dealing with are issues that been around for decades; exclusion, harassment, issues around consent, the fact is now they are playing out in the tech space," Mr Delaney said.
"Our whole perception is that cyberbullying is social issues playing out online. We help them navigate social stuff and how it translates to the online world."
Mr Delaney said the Project Rockit approach recognised that young people had different levels of confidence and different 'social currency' among their peers, and equipped them to get involved as much as they felt comfortable.
"They can intervene in the moment and we arm them with ways to defuse a situation, or if they don't feel comfortable to do anything in that moment, they can provide support to a person either face to face or anonymously."
Over the next two years Project Rockit hopes to train about 10,000 digital ambassadors.
"A digital ambassador is someone who recognises their online power in the world and chooses to use that for good, even when it's tough," he said. "They choose kindness when it's not necessarily the easiest path to choose."
Project Rockit was in Ballarat in April to run a seminar for parents on cyber safety and to urge them to learn more about the social media platforms their children use.
"Our goal, when we work with parents, is to debunk those myths or concerns at the forefront of their minds," Mr Delaney said at the time.
"We're providing them with some literacy about what social media platforms are out there and how young people use them, and we share learnings from working with over 300,000 students over 13 years."
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