Full Notification

For Immediate Release

2010 Cyber Safety Summit

(Paulding County, GA) The Paulding County Sheriff’s Office will be hosting the 2nd annual parent’s ONLY Cyber Safety Summit in April to educate parents on the potential dangers and risks involved with the Internet, online gaming, chat rooms, texting, and “sexting”. The event will be offered on Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium of Chattahoochee Technical College (Paulding Campus) located at 400 Nathan Dean Blvd. Dallas, GA 30132.

“Do you know where your children are….ONLINE?” This is the question that we are asking the parents of our community. Our goal is to educate the parents so that they can embrace the benefits of the Internet and cell phones while simultaneously safe guarding their children from online exploitation or other dangers.

With the help of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, MyWirelessLife.org, Keep Georgia Safe.org, Paulding Child Advocacy Center and the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) this year’s summit, led by the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office, will address the growing trend of texting, “sexting”, online gaming, and Internet safety. “Children usually do not realize that they are being victimized until it is too late,” noted Paulding County Sheriff Gary Gulledge. “Parents often times do not understand the technology being used by their children and the potential danger, if it is used irresponsibly.”

This type of proactive approach (an educational summit) to cyber safety has only been offered in Paulding County. We hope to dramatically decrease the number of potential child victims in the areas of online exploitation (and other dangers) thru this summit.

Since seating is limited, participants are asked to register (RSVP) although admission is free. They only need to send the names of the person(s) attending to the email address listed on the flyer ([email protected]) for the location they choose to attend.

Here are a few reviews that were received after last year’s summit:

Email 1:

Brandon,

I would like to echo the responses that you have already received and say what a great job everyone did last night at the Cyber Safety Summit. I hope that the word will continue to spread and together, as a community, we can begin to educate both parents and children alike on potential dangers of the internet and of dangerous games our children are playing such as the “choking game”.

I also wanted to see if there’s any way you could send me one of the packages that were distributed after the meeting. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the end so I was unable to pick one up.

Email 2:

I attended the Cyber Summit last night and will attend the one at East Paulding High on Wednesday evening at 7. I urge you to attend. Please forward this email to everyone in your address book that has children. The danger is real and it only takes a couple of hours of education to combat it!!

Email 3:

Thank you so much for putting this summit together. While I knew about online dangers and had heard about some of the dangerous games kids were playing, it didn’t hit me how serious these problems are until hearing the firsthand, local experiences last night. What courage and love it took for those dads to share their stories and I know they will save lives.

Please keep continuing your outreach into our community by hosting these summits. Hopefully, participation will continue to grow. We are all better parents and our kids are much safer when we are informed.

Thank you!

Email 4:

My husband & I attended the Cyber Safety Summit Monday (4/27) at the Paulding Co High School.

WOW! This was a VERY informative event and we are so glad we took the time to attend. I would love to encourage you to attend the Cyber Safety Summit @ East Paulding if you did not attend Monday night (4/27). It will be well worth your time!!

We were informed on things that absolutely gave us a wake up call. Sometimes we just think we have it all together, and nothing like these things will ever come home to us...I know from experience that none of us are exempt from tragedy. May I encourage you to take a couple of hours to find out what your children/grandchildren may be involved in.

Thanks to our law enforcement officers and other community workers that took the time after being on their jobs all day to share this most valuable information to the public. It's public education like this that may prevent heartache to a family while possibly preventing the death of a loved one. Thank you so much for sharing.
Email 5:

Corporal Gurley:

You guys did a great job tonight. As I told Sheriff Gulledge, you have started something good here, and I hope to see it spread like wild fire. I have nine and eleven year old daughters, and I don't want to see their lives impacted by any of the things that we heard tonight. Thank you for putting the summit together. Paulding County needs to hear the message.

Email 6:

I just wanted to thank you all for providing the children's safety summit for our community and school employees. I attended the session last night at East Paulding High School and learned some very important information for our students and for my own children.

Thank you again for all your time and efforts.
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