Dutch organization Spine receives ChildX Award 2024

The Dutch organization Spine is awarded the ChildX Award 2024 for its pioneering work in protecting children from sexual exploitation.

During the ChildX conference on 12 November, the Dutch organization Spine was awarded the ChildX Award. At the conference, Sebastiaan Landers and Johannes Dijkstra from Spine gave a presentation explaining in detail how they work to protect children in the digital sphere.

At a time when digital platforms can serve both as tools for exploitation and as a lifeline for vulnerable children, Spine is leading the way in protecting children online. Their digital outreach program uses technology, social services and open source to discreetly and immediately provide support to children.

By using advanced digital tools, their outreach methods can offer help to children in need of support, establishing an important line of defense against exploiters.

– Their proactive work demonstrates how technology and humanity can work together to tackle a challenging and often underreported crime, both quickly and effectively,” said Elise Thoen, Policy and Program Director at ChildX.

During its visit to Sweden, Spine has also met with various key stakeholders to share its work and methods, including the Swedish National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings, Janna Davidson, the Swedish Police, the Support Cluster against Sexualized Violence and the Salvation Army.

– We are honored to receive this award! It is a great recognition of our work,” said Sebastiaan Landers, Director of Spine. “If we want to protect children from being exploited, we need to be online and actively looking for them. If we don’t, they risk remaining invisible. Our program has shown that digital outreach is an effective tool to do just that. In addition to the honour, this gives us the opportunity to share our results and methods, and to get to know the organizations in Sweden that work against human trafficking and support victims.

The ChildX Award was created to encourage and drive systemic change. The award highlights organizations that excel in this important area and promotes new, innovative approaches being developed to address this complex and ever-changing challenge.

By awarding Spine this prize, we recognize not only their significant contribution, but also the need to raise awareness of the digital child rights crisis – and hope to encourage further innovation in this area. The organization will receive an award of 100,000 SEK to scale up and disseminate its methods.

Find out more about Spine’s work on their website.