Another report from Angela! The World Congress of Families ended last weekend but there was so much good information that Angela will be going through her notes and writing more reports about the presentations she attended to share with us.

One of the difficult things about WCF is choosing which presentations to attend, because they are all amazing. One of the many neat stories that came out of Friday was from the Russian delegation. As I reported previously, Russia is rising and they are becoming a force for good around the world. This also includes hosting World Congress of Families 2014 in Moscow at the Kremlin. They expect 5000 representatives from 80 countries and from around Russia to be a part of this historic Congress. Isn’t it incredible and ironic that where there once was Communism, there will now be the world’s largest pro-religion, pro-family Congress? As I said before, Russia is rising!

I wish I could describe the feelings I had of the goodness of the Russian delegation. They are intent on protecting and defending traditional marriage and children and have been working tirelessly to do so. They inspired us! One of the presentations was lead by Alexey Komov and a young Russian aristocrat and prince named Hilarion (last name unavailable at the moment). In an effort to combat child pornography on Russia’s Internet, they worked with several organizations and volunteers in Russia to form the Safe Internet League.
The Safe Internet League notes these disturbing statistics from the past decade:

• Sexual content involving children on the Internet has grown 2,500%
• In the same period, sexual violence against children increased 3,000%
• The United Nations reports that the United States, Russia and Thailand lead in the growth of illegal web content (promoting pornography, prostitution and drug trafficking)
• Almost 20% of Russian Internet users are children under 15-years-of-age. More than 4 million Russian children (ages 7 to 15) have unlimited access to the Internet, 24 hours a day.
• Close to 90% of Russian parents with children 6 to 12 years of age, are unaware of the risks associated with the Internet or how to protect their families from the same.

The Safe Internet League have created a grassroots movement including “cyber guards”, who recently uncovered Russia’s largest internet pornography ring. They are shutting down and blacklisting harmful sights on a daily basis while providing free internet filters for the families of Russia. Hilarion said that they “do not want to put their children in a sea and tell them to go swim with the sharks.” I loved that analogy and think it can be used with any number of issues with protecting children!

These free internet filters started just recently (April 2013) and they found 500,000 sites that were safe for children. Their end goal? To have 3 million sites that are safe for children. How do they do this? It’s called “White Internet” and they are building an algorithm to control and shut down pornography sites. Alexey Komov concluded that, “There is a sickness around the world and we hope that we will be the cure.”

Here is the link to their website but it is in Russian: http://www.ligainternet.ru/

Thanks, Angela! Iceland already bans pornography in its country and is trying to also ban internet pornography from being accessed in Iceland. They are a great example of doing good to protect children. Unfortunately there are many decrying “foul” because their freedom of speech is being infringed upon. You can read more about Iceland’s endeavors here.

There are groups here in America who are also trying to fight pornography. A few include: Women for Decency, Morality in Media, and Fight the New Drug.