Ten programs, built in the order people actually need them.

Eyes Open

We go into schools and talk to young people — especially girls — about how manipulation actually works, online and in person, and how to trust the feeling that something is off.

Every other program on this page meets someone after things have already gone wrong. This one exists to get there first. A girl who can recognise what someone is doing to her, while they are still being nice about it, is in a completely different position than one who can't.

What we actually teach

We do not teach the version everyone already knows. Strangers in vans are not the danger. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the person doing the harm is someone the young person knows, or someone who has spent weeks being kind to them online. That is the harder lesson, and it is the one that works.

• How grooming actually looks. It starts as attention, flattery, and being understood. It moves somewhere private. It becomes a secret. Each step feels small, and that is the point.
• The warning signs that matter. Someone who wants the relationship kept secret. Gifts, money, or status offered fast. Someone putting distance between you and your friends or family. Someone who escalates when you hesitate.
• Online pressure and sextortion. What to do the moment an image is used as leverage — covered in full below, because it is the part that costs girls the most.
• Situational awareness without fear. Noticing exits, keeping a hand free, trusting the feeling before you can explain it, and having a way out planned before you need one.
• A plan and a person. A code word with a trusted adult, a check-in habit, and a rehearsed way to leave a situation without needing an excuse.
• It is never their fault. Said plainly, more than once. Young people who believe they will be blamed do not tell anyone, and silence is what makes it continue.

The conversation about images

This is the part we spend the most time on, because it is where the most damage is being done right now and where the usual adult response makes things worse.

The pattern is almost always the same. It is not a stranger. It is a boyfriend, or someone presenting as one, who has spent weeks being attentive and making her feel chosen. The request comes wrapped in love: if you trusted me, everyone does it, I already sent you one. She sends it because she believes it is a private thing between two people who care about each other. Then it is used against her — for more images, for money, or simply passed around a school.

We teach that an image of a minor is child sexual abuse material, and that this stays true when the girl took it herself under pressure. We use that term rather than "pornography" on purpose. Pornography implies something consensual between adults. This is abuse, and naming it accurately changes how she understands what was done to her.

• She is not the criminal. We say this before anything else. A girl who was pressured into sending an image is the victim of a crime, not the author of one. Fear of being arrested or expelled is the single biggest reason girls stay silent while it gets worse.
• It is serious and it spreads fast. An image can be copied, re-shared, and stored by people she will never identify. We do not soften that.
• But it is not hopeless, and we refuse to teach that it is. "It is on the internet forever, there is nothing you can do" is the message that leads girls to self-harm. Images of minors can be found and taken down. Take It Down, run free by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, does this without the image ever leaving her device. We walk through exactly how to use it.
• The immediate steps. Stop responding. Do not pay — paying always brings another demand. Screenshot the account and the messages. Do not delete the conversation. Tell an adult tonight, not tomorrow. Report it.
• What to say to a friend. Most girls hear about it from another girl first. We teach them how to respond without judgment, and how to get an adult involved without it feeling like betrayal.

How a session runs

1. We plan it with the school

   The counsellor or administrator sees the full curriculum before we book anything. Nothing is a surprise, and families can be notified in advance.

2. 45 to 60 minutes, age-appropriate

   Separate versions for middle and high school. No graphic content, no scare tactics, no photographs of victims. Fear does not teach — it just makes people stop listening.

3. Conversation, not a lecture

   Scenarios and discussion. Girls talk far more honestly in a smaller group, so we run those separately wherever the school can make room for it.

4. Everyone leaves with something

   A wallet card of numbers that answer 24/7, and a way to reach a trusted adult. We stay afterward, because the most important conversations happen once the room clears.

When a survivor wants to speak

Nothing lands in a school gym like a woman standing up and saying this happened to me, and here is how he did it. Girls who tune out an adult explaining warning signs will not tune that out.

So we do not refuse survivor voices. We just refuse to go looking for them. The offer has to come from her, unprompted, and everything after that is built to make sure she can change her mind.

• We never ask. Not once, not gently, not "if you ever felt ready". The moment an organisation asks, a survivor who owes it something cannot freely say no.
• Adults only. Eighteen and over, without exception, and not with a parent's permission either. A girl of sixteen cannot consent to permanently attaching her name and face to her own abuse — she has not met the twenty-five-year-old who will have to live with it.
• Not while it is raw. Time has to have passed and her footing has to be steady. Telling it too early can set someone back badly, and we would rather lose the talk than do that to her.
• She owns the content. What goes in, what stays out, which details are nobody's business. Nothing is recorded, quoted, or published without her reading it first and saying yes.
• She can stop. Before, during, or years later. If she withdraws, we pull everything we can reach and stop telling it. No guilt, no conversation about how much it would have helped.
• Tactics, not graphic detail. For a school audience this matters twice over: the manipulation is the useful part, and somewhere in that room is a girl it is happening to right now.
• She is paid for her time. Like any other speaker, for the work — never for the story, and never more for a harder one.
• Never a condition of anything. Her help, her support, her place here does not depend on it and never will.
• Someone is with her. Prep beforehand, a person beside her on the day, and a proper debrief after. She does not do it alone and she does not go home alone afterward.