Cyber For Youth's 1st Workshop

Article written by: Nirvika Choudhury, Sahana Suresh, Loreen Lu, Natasha Gumpula, Jia Fletcher, and Puravi Abburi

A few of our Cyber For Youth team members volunteering in our first workshop.

On November 18th, the Cyber for Youth team hosted its first workshop at Monta Vista High School, where we engaged four hundred ninth graders in important conversations about online safety. The teen-led workshop was held all day long in 45-minute blocks. The workshop’s main focus was ensuring that students understand the implications of cyberbullying and digital footprints. Students participated in an interactive activity where they assessed a fictional character’s digital presence and devised strategies to improve it. This encouraged students to understand the long-term impact of their online actions and to think critically about their digital presence moving forward. 

Ria Sethi, the founder of Cyber For Youth, was at the heart of ensuring the Monta Vista event ran smoothly. Her journey began with strong connections – Ria had worked with the principal before through the Social, Emotional, and Equity Coalition (SEEC). Through this connection, the Cyber For Youth team was able to present a pitch deck and an outline for the workshop to the principal, Mr. Ben Clausnitzer. Once Mr. Clausnitzer approved their pitch and included the workshop in the ninth-grade PE curriculum, they moved on to creating content for the event. The process involved several rounds of review and feedback to ensure that the material met the school’s standards and was tailored to the 9th graders’ interests. 

Nirvika Choudhury, the head of the Research and Writing team, was instrumental in shaping the workshop’s content. She designed the digital footprint character scenario activity to provide students with an engaging way to reflect on their online choices.

Students participating in the digital footprint activity are separating good posts from bad and identifying what can be improved in the bad posts. Photo taken by Rafael Bañes.

“I wanted to provide students something that was both interactive and something that they could take away about digital footprints,” she explained. Nirvika wrote detailed character profiles, including posts, comments, and search histories. Her goal was to highlight how people from diverse backgrounds face online challenges, making the lesson relatable and impactful.  Rafael Bañes, the head of marketing, transformed these profiles into visuals for the activity. “I had a lot of creative freedom with the number of likes, profile pictures, and creating the YouTube thumbnails,” he shared. These footprints required careful attention to detail to ensure every comment or each character’s interaction felt authentic.

When Mr. Clausnitzer requested the workshop to be shortened to 45 minutes from the original 90 minutes, Nirvika collaborated with Ria to revise the content and ensure that the core activities remained engaging and relevant. Next, planning shifted into high gear after the workshop date was finalized. “There were a lot of things that had to be done that we didn’t realize had to be done,” Ria said. This included printing materials, assigning roles, and managing roles for the presenters. 

To discuss logistics and prepare for the workshop, the team held multiple meetings at Starbucks. “We had a lot of meetings as just the workshop team,” shared Samhita Srimath Kandali, one of the two heads of the Communications Team at Cyber for Youth. “But apart from that, we met with just the presenters.” She enjoyed practicing her presentation with other C4Y members before the workshop. “It felt like a mock version of what we’d be doing, and it helped us refine our presentations and get comfortable with the flow.” Besides the Starbucks meetings, Ria also conducted individual preparation meetings with each workshop member by having them share their presentation and giving them mock situations to respond to. 

Natasha Gumpala and Loreen Lu, Research and Writing team members, passed out materials during the Monta Vista workshop and engaged in student discussions. Loreen found “being able to teach kids about the dangers online and how they should be aware online” and interacting with “Cyber For Youth [members] and being able to be friends with some of them,” a rewarding experience. Natasha appreciated the enthusiasm some students from Period 2 displayed when forming ideas and solutions during the digital footprint activity. When she went up to their table, they were excited to share how they would make a better profile for their given person; some of them mentioned apology videos, which was a creative and unique idea that stuck out to Natasha, as not many people had mentioned it before. Additionally, while presenting and discussing, she did her best to make sure the students were paying attention. “Keeping them engaged was really important,” Gumpula said. “If I were engaged, they would be, too,” she explained. Similarly, Vaishnavi Rajesh, a Communications team member, adjusted her approach to keep the students engaged and understood that "adapting and keeping [her] focus on helping them understand was key." By the end of the workshop, she was proud to see the kids stay involved and interested. "To keep the students engaged during my section, I used voice modulation and made sure to show enthusiasm," Vaishnavi explained. She felt that showing excitement about the topic kept the students more involved, and that made all the difference.

Freshmen presenting their boards and digital profiles to workshop attendees. Photo taken by Rafael Bañes.

Freshmen taking a picture with their boards and one of our Cyber For Youth members, Natasha Gumpula. Photo taken by Rafael Bañes.

This engaging approach left a lasting impression on MV freshmen Julia Pan and Ariel Yu. Ariel, when discussing the Digital Footprint Mystery Case Box activity, believed “it allowed her to take what we had been learning, all the data and info, and apply it to the real-life scenarios.” Julia shared her key takeaways from the workshop, saying, “I never knew that job employers would look at things like my posts, so now I'm extra cautious about my digital footprint.” The goal of educating students on this topic was to encourage students like Julia and Ariel to reflect on their online activity and make any necessary changes to improve their digital footprint. These experiences made the learning process more enjoyable and helped students practically understand the significance of online safety topics.

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