Starlight Foundation plans secure social networking site for teens

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 29 March 2007 03:43

Your IT - Home IT

Children's charity the Starlight Foundation is extending its reach into cyberspace with the launch of a secure online social networking community for sick teenagers which it hopes will be partially paid for by fundraising within the IT community.

The Starlight Online Community project is due to launch in pilot form for 500 teenagers in June. It will offer a secure environment where teenagers suffering from major illnesses can chat and interact with each other, both about issues dealing with their condition and also more general topics of teen interest.

"Starlight always works in supporting children that are seriously ill and hospitalised, and helping them when it's easy to feel frightened and isolated," said Starlight head of marketing Anne Johnston. "For all children, that's a scary time, but for young people and teenagers it's particularly damaging and devastating because they're at this stage where they're just blossoming into personalities."

The Internet can help ease that sense of isolation, Johnston said. "What the Starlight Online Community is doing is giving them an opportunity to be in contact. They can be in contact with other kids who've been through a similar thing. We'll have hosted communities with forums with topics relevant to all teenagers."

The site design and topics are being guided by teenagers to ensure relevance, and separate areas will be created for 10-12, 13-15 and 16-18 year olds. "It's going to be owned by the kids -- we'll facilitate it," Johnston said. "The kids will be very involved in how it looks and feels. They'll get the tools to make it very relevant to them."

"We're researching with the kids all the time. We're also researching with healthy kids, because we want these kids to feel that they belong, and haven't been institutionalised. We're very much trying to keep it feeling right."

"For Starlight, this is probably the largest project that we've ever taken on," Johnston said. "We're going to roll it out over two to three year, and hope to reach 280,000 kids in the long term. We will stage the rollout in order to make sure that the appropriate funding is there."

Fundraising dinners hosted by the IT Fund for Kids, which will donate money to the project, will be held in Melbourne and Sydney in August. The fund hopes to raise $500,000 in 2007.