Fordham Law’s Center on Law and Information Policy (CLIP) has been awarded a $120,000 grant by the Digital Trust Foundation to support its Volunteer Privacy Educators program. With the grant’s help, the VPE program will continue for another two years and will produce new online content including training materials and video podcasts.
CLIP launched the first-of-its-kind program in 2012. Through peer discussions among middle school students guided by a team of law student volunteers, the program aims to inform youth about technology and how it relates to their privacy and identity. Based on research conducted by former CLIP Privacy Fellow Jordan Kovnot and current Privacy Fellow Thomas Norton, the program curriculum is designed to spur conversations about the meaning of privacy, how privacy may be relevant to young people’s lives, and how the technologies they regularly use impact their privacy. For the pilot run in spring 2013, CLIP recruited and trained a team of Fordham Law students to teach these lessons to 7th grade students at P.S. 191, a public middle school in Manhattan. Since then, thirteen other universities have adopted the program for use in their own communities.
“CLIP consistently recruits a terrific group of Fordham Law students who are interested and excited to do public service projects in our local community,” said Professor Joel Reidenberg, Founding Academic Director of CLIP. “It’s great to see these young students learn thinking skills and privacy awareness as they engage in online activity.”
The Digital Trust Foundation is dedicated to privacy education for youth. Its mission is to invest in educating Internet users on how to protect themselves and their information from online threats. The program focuses on implementing, assessing, and disseminating educational strategies aimed at increasing the privacy resilience of children and teens.