Rabbi Diana Gerson joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as the two discuss how faith-based communities can play a critical role in protecting children online and building a network of trusted community leaders.

Rabbi Diana Gerson

Rabbi Diana Gerson is the Associate Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis. She represents the organization at the United Nations and leads interfaith initiatives focused on child welfare, community resilience, and violence prevention. She is a member of the Child Dignity in a Digital World initiative and serves as Senior Advisor for Partnerships and External Relationships at the Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities. She co-founded the Global Advocacy Hub for Children and Families and is the USA Country Coordinator for the Global Network of Religions for Children. In 2024, she was appointed to the UNHCR Multi-Religious Council of Leaders.

Key Points

• Faith-based communities play a crucial but often overlooked role in child protection. Religious institutions, such as houses of worship and community centers, function as youth-serving organizations and must take responsibility for safeguarding children.
• Digital literacy is a fundamental skill for both children and adults. Many older generations struggle with technology, yet children are highly adept at navigating digital spaces, often without understanding the risks.
• Free apps are not truly free—when users don’t pay with money, they pay with their personal data. Parents and faith leaders must educate themselves on the risks of digital platforms and the terms and conditions that affect privacy and safety.
• Child protection policies in faith-based institutions should match those of public schools, including background checks, training, and accountability measures for both staff and volunteers.
• There is no single “safe” place for children—every organization must have observable and interruptible spaces to ensure child safety. Parents must take an active role in monitoring these environments.
• Online exploitation is a growing crisis, fueled by the ease of image sharing on digital platforms. Faith-based organizations must recognize their responsibility in digital safety education and safeguarding measures.
• Many faith-based organizations lack proper protocols for reporting abuse. Instead of conducting internal investigations first, they must follow legal reporting requirements and ensure transparency.
• Faith leaders can be powerful advocates for online safety and child protection by integrating these issues into sermons and community discussions. These conversations should not be relegated to separate, optional trainings but rather be normalized as part of faith-based teaching.
• Partnering with faith-based organizations in digital literacy efforts is essential. Trainings should start with executive-level leaders and then expand to parents, staff, and youth members.
• Involving trusted religious leaders in digital safety initiatives can help overcome parental resistance. When faith leaders co-facilitate trainings, parents are more likely to trust and engage with the material.
• Normalizing discussions about technology and online risks is as crucial as past societal shifts in addressing domestic violence, child abuse, and public health issues like cancer. Faith leaders must lead by example in these conversations.
• Young people must be seen as part of the solution, not just future stakeholders. Engaging them in leadership roles and advocacy efforts empowers them to protect themselves and their peers.

Resources

• LinkedIn – Rabbi Diana Gerson
• Instagram – Rabbi Diana Gerson

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sandie: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice right here in Orange County, California. This is episode number 340, Building a Network of Trusted Community Leaders with Rabbi Diana Gerson. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan,

[00:00:23] and this is a show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I am so delighted to have Rabbi Diana Gerson with me today. She is the Associate Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis. But she is so much more,

[00:00:49] she represents the organization at the United Nations and leads interfaith initiatives focused on child welfare, community resilience, and violence prevention. I want to just list, the organizations that she is involved as members or serving on in some way. Just to highlight the value of that connectedness and overlapping networks, She’s a member of the Child Dignity In a digital world. She was appointed senior advisor for partnerships and external relationships at the interfaith Alliance for safer communities. She co founded the global advocacy hub for children and families. And she’s the USA country coordinator for the global network of religions for children. She was also appointed in 2024 to the UNHCR multi religious council of leaders. Wow, that is a mouthful, I had to take several breaths. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, Diana.

[00:02:08] Diana: Thank you, Sandie, so much for having me. It is wonderful to be back.

[00:02:12] Sandie: That’s right. That’s right. You’ve been on here before and I imagine we will find time to do this again. you’re going to be at Ensure Justice this year and the aspect of how we keep our kids safe online in a brand new digital world, there is a role for faith based communities to play that we often don’t talk about.

[00:02:38] We talk about parents need to do this, schools need to do that. So tell us how the faith based community can join.

[00:02:47] Diana: It’s an amazing thing that happens when we talk about children, because children intersect. And pull together all the threads of community. Children go to school, children are at home, children have networks of friends, they belong to the Girl Scouts, they go to, Cub Scouts, and they’re in Little League, and soccer, and art, and dance.

[00:03:08] But they’re also essential members of our faith communities. In fact, if we think about it for a second, faith communities and religious institutions, faith institutions, whether they’re houses of worship, community centers, the YMCA, the JCC, etc, they are all youth serving organizations. We don’t often frame it that way.

[00:03:30] We don’t think about it in those terms, but they are. And every single faith based institution has computers. We have computers, we have Wi Fi, we have digital footprints, we have access to educational opportunities, we intersect online all the time, with those institutions. So we have a really important role in the safeguarding of children and being a resource in actually building global citizenship and digital literacy.

[00:04:05] If we’re not part of the conversation, we’re part of the problem.

[00:04:09] Sandie: Okay. So. Let’s sit for a minute in what digital literacy actually means, because I’m pretty sure there are communities of folks my age, the grandmas and the grandpas, who feel totally out of sync and unable to engage with their grandkids, because digital literacy is such a looming mountain to climb.

[00:04:37] Diana: Oh my goodness. What does it even mean to be digitally literate? I, I meet people all the time and they’re like, I’m really good on my desktop computer, but I can’t quite figure out my iPad. I’m really good on my phone, but it doesn’t really coordinate with my laptop. And what I have found is if I ask a seven year old, they can tell me how to figure all of it out.

[00:04:59] Children today don’t see the world in that way. So understanding a few basic things about your, your device, right? Digital literacy means understanding the device  itself. This is a supercomputer. The cell phone today is no longer a telephone that’s attached to the wall in the house.

[00:05:16] It’s no longer a place where it’s a conversation just between two people. This is a supercomputer that connects you to anything in the world. It is the most extraordinary gift we have given to our children. And it is the greatest threat that we have put in their very hands. We have such a responsibility to understand the device and the programs that The child is using and who they are communicating with through that device every single day.

[00:05:47] We see these apps. And I remember once talking to a parent, Oh, my child can download anything that’s free.

[00:05:54] Sandie: Oh,

[00:05:55] Diana: I’m like, Nothing is free. So what does that exactly mean? So the parent is saying, Oh, my child could buy anything that, you know, download anything out of the app store so long as it doesn’t cost me, the parent, anything.

[00:06:09] And I’m like, you do understand that if you’re not paying for something, you, the user, you are the commodity. They are buying and selling your information. Now, you go and you download an app. We’ve all done it. We download an app. Now what? Terms and conditions. How many of us have read all the terms and conditions, and I, I dare anybody to read them out loud.

[00:06:33] It’s like watching paint dry.

[00:06:36] Sandie: hmm.

[00:06:36] Diana: It’s a lot of legalese, and we have absolutely no idea what is embedded in there. I’ll give you a small example. Bitmoji. Bitmoji, you go into the terms and conditions, you click yes, okay, you didn’t pay much attention. But if you actually use Bitmoji, and go directly from the app, into your text messages, and send it, Bitmoji now o