Fellows will undergo an intense three months training as they work with professional cyber safety teams in the region. The fellows will work as a part of SafetyComm’s national cyber safety team based in Juba with travel to the other states.

Female candidates are encouraged to apply.

SafetyComm is a platform that works on combating cyber threats to citizens in South Sudan by providing a support system to mitigate harmful cyber trends. The Initiative offers support to victims of online harm, creates awareness, and provides capacity building to various governmental, non-governmental, and private sector actors in South Sudan. The platform was established as a joint effort of #defyhatenow and the National Communication Authority, since its establishment, SafetyComm has responded to over 200 incidents related to the online safety of South Sudanese citizens, while most of these issues are viewed as common threats, SafetyComm has witnessed an increased level of new types of threats and strategies used by online scammers, hackers and various malicious actors to manipulate and harm South Sudanese online.

About #deyhatenow
DHN is a national organization that works on promoting digital rights and creating a framework for increasing trust between stakeholders and communities in Africa through mobilizing civic action against all forms of hate speech, misinformation, human rights violations, and incitement to violence; with an operational base in Juba, South Sudan

About NCA
NCA is the National Telecommunication and ICT regulator in South Sudan, established by an act of parliament and mandated by the Government of South Sudan to facilitate access to affordable quality ICT services through a conducive environment to enable accelerated socio-economic development in the country. NCA is currently headquartered in Juba, South Sudan, and has operations in the ten states of South Sudan and the three administrative areas.

Follow the link to apply https://forms.gle/mBFe1H7TXWDM44Zc8 before Saturday 28th May, 2022

Contact us on this email for more information

info@safetycomm.org

The workshop with the primary goal of increasing participants’ understanding of fact-checking and rumour tracking, exchanging best practices and lessons learnt on working with rumours and misleading information in Juba, South Sudan and beyond brought together a total of 14 participants from both 211 Check Desk and Hagiga Wahid Community Ambassadors at #defyhatenow South Sudan and Junub Open Space organizations.

“I expected to share knowledge and gain skills on how to counter rumours,” Santino Lau said at the start of the workshop. “I hope to gain capacity and more skills of fact-checking and verifying information,” Nivella Emmanuel said.

During the workshop, participants had presentations on rumours and rumour tracking, introduction to fact-checking and verification. They participated in group exercises on how to address different types of rumours.

“I also took them through how they can differentiate between facts, opinions and different news sources. They also were introduced to basic fact-checking tools like the reverse image search and how to verify social media profiles,” Emmanuel Bida Thomas, 211 Check project coordinator and workshop facilitator said.

Though most participants agreed that the training partly met their expectations, they needed more time on hands-on skills in doing the reverse image search, verifying videos and social media profiles.

“The workshop has exposed me to several ways of tackling and fact-checking rumours,” a participant said.

The workshop is part of 211 Check’s incubation programme with Code for Africa under the Africa Fact-checking Alliance