Young Digital Leaders

We believe young people can learn to be upstanders, not bystanders, and help create safe, positive and vibrant communities online.

Young Digital Leaders is an educational programme that empowers young people across Europe aged 12-16 to apply digital citizenship, critical thinking and media literacy skills online. Based around a core curriculum that addresses cross-cutting harms such as disinformation and targeted abuse, the programme supports young people to recognise the positive contributions they can make to their digital communities.

In addition to the curriculum, ISD have developed a guide for parents and a Digital Citizenship Education Programming Toolkit for NGOs, enabling them to develop and expand digital resilience beyond the classroom.

To date, ISD has partnered with civil society organisations in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Romania and Sweden to engage a spectrum of students, teachers and parents. These include Kommon Ground (Sweden); Associazione Artistica Culturale (A Rocca) (Italy); Action Synergy (Greece); Rose Valley (Bulgaria); and the Group of European Youth for Change (GEYC) (Romania).

In just two years, the programme has reached over 10,000 students, 550 teachers and 230 parents across the region. Furthermore, our 2019 evaluation indicated that:

97% of parents and carers felt better able to help their children deal with online safety challenges having attended a YDL session;
98% of teachers who attended a training thought the YDL programme is helpful to teach digital citizenship;
94% of students felt the workshop taught new knowledge and skills.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the programme’s French curriculum was adapted to provide educators with additional guidance and activities that enable them to discuss online disinformation, stereotyping, and hatred via a public health lens.

All the Young Digital Leaders resources are available to download below in English, Bulgarian, French, Greek and Romanian.

Latest Education publications

Click here for more relevant publications

ISD’s Education team

Jennie King

Head of Climate Research and Policy

Follow @jkingy

Jennie King is Head of Climate Research and Policy, leading efforts to translate ISD's digital research into frontline programming and response. Through ISD, she helped found Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a coalition of over 50 organisations working to identify, analyse and counter climate disinformation worldwide. She has spearheaded investigations on climate denialism and ‘discourses of delay’ in the contexts of Australia, Canada, Central Europe, Germany, South Africa, the US and UK, as well as co-authored a number of ISD’s flagship reports on this issue. Jennie also helped design, and currently manages, the COP Intelligence Units on behalf of CAAD, leading over 15 partners to produce real-time monitoring of mis- and disinformation around climate summits.

Lucie Parker

Senior Project Operations Manager

Follow @@lucie_parker

Lucie Parker is a Senior Project Operations Manager at ISD, responsible for the project and grant management, operational delivery and fundraising activities for ISD’s portfolio of programmes across Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. She also works on developing policies and practices that implement ISD’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and organisational wellbeing. Lucie has spent her career managing programmes across a range of social justice issues in the UK and international charity and non-profit sectors, with previous roles including Gender Analyst at International Crisis Group and Senior Policy and Research Officer at the Fawcett Society. She is a Founding Trustee of Bread & Roses, a charity that provides holistic support to refugee and asylum seeking women as they rebuild their lives in the UK. She is the co-author of the Young Digital Leaders Impact Report and Digital Resilience: Stronger Citizens Online. Lucie holds an MA with distinction in War Studies from King’s College London and a BA in Politics from the University of York.

Nathalie Rücker

Senior Manager, Capacity Building & Civic Action, ISD Germany

Nathalie Rücker is Senior Manager, Capacity Building and Civic Action for ISD Germany. She manages the Business Council for Democracy (BC4D) project and also co-leads the project "Pan European Coalition against Online Antisemitism" (CCOA). Previously, Nathalie worked at the intersection of peacebuilding research, conflict prevention and human rights education, in Germany and abroad, focusing on global citizenship education and the capacity building of civil society actors. She holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Public International Law and International Relations and is a trained conflict mediator.

Sara Bundtzen

Research and Policy Analyst, ISD Germany

Sara Bundtzen is a Research and Policy Analyst at ISD Germany. She is involved in the Digital Policy Lab (DPL), an intergovernmental working group focused on countering online disinformation, hate speech and extremism. She also supports ISD’s digital analysis of information manipulation, disinformation, propaganda and influence campaigns. Sara holds an MA in International Security from Sciences Po Paris and a BSc in European Studies from the University of Southern Denmark.