Cybersecurity Month Spotlight: Community of Purpose Cybersafety Champions Workshop

On October 21, 2025, the Cybersecurity Capacity Center for Southern Africa (C3SA) in the Department of Information Systems hosted Cybersecurity Champions from schools and communities involved in the C3SA project. The NRF-funded initiative aims to create a bottom-up framework for designing and managing a cybersecurity community of purpose in rural South African schools. The ethos of the project is that a school's cybersecurity depends not only on learners and educators but also on the surrounding community. Therefore, the project is equipping various school stakeholders with cybersecurity skills. Besides acting as a link between the project team and local communities, the cybersecurity champions mobilize other community members to participate. The champions' event is part of the co-design process for the project. Participants were drawn from Umyezo Wama Apile Secondary School (Grabouw) and Zwelethemba Secondary School (Worcester). A similar event was held in Polokwane by the University of Limpopo team on October 18, 2025. 

The project runs various cybersecurity interventions in the school communities. So far, the project has held a learners’ cybersecurity campaign, a poster competition for learners, as well as offering cybersecurity training for the community. Planned activities include cybersecurity training for educators and community leaders, as well as radio and social media campaigns. The final artifacts of the project will include a framework and a software application, which will connect and empower various stakeholders in a school’s context to ensure the cybersafety of learners and the school community.