REDefine - Association for Research, Education and Development

05/06/2026

Behind every REDefine weekly newsletter, there is much more than a list of links.

There is reading, rewriting, checking, connecting ideas, deciding what belongs together, and asking the same question again and again:

What is the deeper pattern here?

This week’s newsletter brought together digital dependence, child safety online, the EU Pet Passport, and the DINARA-WELWET workshops on One Health, wildlife conservation, youth skills, and digital tools.

At first glance, these topics may seem far apart.

But the work behind the newsletter is precisely to look beneath the surface and find the thread: the systems people depend on, the safeguards that often remain invisible, the skills young people need, and the questions public life asks us before we are ready to answer them.

That means moving between articles, reports, policy ideas, project materials, research notes, visuals, captions, headers, tags, SEO, platform posts, and the very human question of how to make complex issues readable without making them shallow.

It is not just “content.”

It is sense-making.

And it takes time.

But we believe this kind of work matters, especially in a world where people are often overloaded with information but still left without orientation.

So every week, we try to offer one small map.

Not the whole world.

Just a clearer way to look at part of it.

— REDefine
Civic intelligence for a world that needs better ways of understanding itself.

https://open.substack.com/pub/associationredefine/p/open-technology-child-safety-one-health-weekly-recap?r=6l8ed8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Two new essays, two coming next week, and one difficult question: who protects people inside the systems they depend on?

04/06/2026

We changed today’s planned article because a tragedy in Bulgaria raises a question that reaches far beyond one city, one app, or one country.

Children ordered dangerous drugs through Telegram before gathering in a fifth-floor apartment. A 16-year-old girl is now dead. A 17-year-old boy was critically injured. The investigation is still ongoing, but one thing is already clear: child protection now has to include the digital spaces young people carry in their pockets every day.

This is not only about Telegram. It is about group chats, messaging apps, online access, platform responsibility, parents, schools, communities, and the difficult balance between safety and privacy.

We all need to confront the question:

Where does responsibility begin, and where does it end?

Read the article: https://open.substack.com/pub/associationredefine/p/when-the-dealer-enters-the-group?r=6l8ed8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

A local tragedy with a global warning: harm can arrive through the apps children use every day.

03/06/2026

We talk a lot about technology. But we rarely ask one of the most important questions:

**Who owns the tools we depend on?**

Our new article in The Code Beneath the Floorboards*is now live.

This is not a typical open-source article. It is not written only for developers, and it is not a technical manual. It is a civic, practical, and deeply human look at the hidden systems shaping our daily lives, workplaces, schools, public services, and organisations.

Inside the article, we explore:

🔹 why buying a device, platform, or service does not always mean truly owning it
🔹 how vendor lock-in quietly appears through contracts, formats, workflows, subscriptions, and habits
🔹 why data export is not enough if the rules, templates, permissions, and institutional memory remain trapped inside a platform
🔹 what digital dependence means for individuals, companies, NGOs, schools, municipalities, and public agencies
🔹 how open technology can help shift power from dependency toward autonomy, repair, reuse, and better governance

For professional readers, the article also includes a practical briefing on organisational dependency: how to map digital risks, ask better procurement questions, understand technical, contractual, and cultural lock-in, and avoid entering systems without an exit path.

And because we wanted this piece to be useful, not only reflective, we created a companion resource:

The Digital Dependency Audit Toolkit — a practical worksheet for organisations that want to identify where they are locked in, what risks matter, and what first steps can make their digital infrastructure more understandable and governable.

This article is for anyone who has ever wondered why leaving a platform feels harder than joining it.

Read the full article here: https://open.substack.com/pub/associationredefine/p/who-owns-the-tools-digital-dependence-open-technology?r=6l8ed8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Why digital dependence is not just a tech problem, and how open technology changes the balance of power

01/06/2026

A moment passes without consequence. Then another.

Harm is renamed procedure. Cruelty becomes firmness. Restraint is treated as hesitation. And slowly, the boundaries that protect dignity become easier to cross.

This essay reflects on how language shapes the moral environment around power: what societies notice, what they excuse, and what they eventually learn to tolerate.

Before institutions change their behaviour, they often change the words used to describe that behaviour.

And before violence becomes normal, it is usually made to sound reasonable.

Read the full essay on Substack: Before the Violence, There Were Speeches: On dignity, restraint, and the language that breaks societies.
https://associationredefine.substack.com/p/before-the-violence-there-were-speeches?r=6l8ed8

31/05/2026

31/05/2026

At REDefine, we believe education is not only about what children learn. It is also about what they learn to believe about themselves.

That belief is at the heart of the Girls in STEM Discovery Library, our new children’s book series created to help girls see science, technology, engineering, math, creativity, and discovery as places where they belong.

The series began with a simple question: what happens before a girl decides she is “not a science kid”?

Long before subject choices, grades, career paths, or university applications, children are already receiving messages about intelligence, confidence, gender, mistakes, and belonging. Some children are praised for being fast. Some are praised for being certain. Some are encouraged to build, experiment, explore, and take things apart. Others are quietly guided toward care, appearance, neatness, or being “good.”

But curiosity does not belong to one kind of child. Intelligence does not have one shape. STEM does not begin with perfection. It begins with noticing, wondering, asking, testing, drawing, building, revising, imagining, and trying again.

That is why we created *The Kind of Smart I Am* as the heart of the series: a picture book that helps children recognize many kinds of smart — quiet-smart, question-smart, pattern-smart, nature-smart, building-smart, careful-smart, messy-smart, helping-smart, and more.

The companion coloring books, *Curious Girls Can Do Science* and *Brilliant Girls in STEM*, then turn that confidence into hands-on discovery through science, space, nature, invention, creativity, and problem-solving.

The Girls in STEM Discovery Library is not a promise to solve every barrier girls face in STEM. It is a gentle beginning. A conversation starter. A confidence-building tool. A way for parents, teachers, homeschool families, libraries, and gift-givers to say to a child: your curiosity matters, your ideas matter, and your way of learning belongs here too.

Every purchase also helps REDefine support children with fewer opportunities by creating and sharing STEM confidence-building materials, learning resources, and educational support for those who cannot easily access them.

Explore, buy, gift, or share the Girls in STEM Discovery Library: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2VH9RM?binding=kindle_edition&qid=

30/05/2026

On girls, curiosity, confidence, and early STEM belonging. Inspired by REDefine’s essay and the Girls in STEM Discovery Library.
Read the full post here: https://associationredefine.substack.com/p/before-she-decides-she-is-not-a-science-kid?r=6l8ed8
Explore, gift, or share the series: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2VH9RM?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1779810464&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin

30/05/2026

We created The Girls in STEM Discovery Library for girls who wonder, ask, draw, color, build, notice, imagine, and try again.

At the heart of the series is The Kind of Smart I Am, a picture book that helps children understand that there is more than one way to be smart. Some children are quiet-smart. Some are question-smart. Some are pattern-smart, nature-smart, building-smart, messy-smart, careful-smart, or helping-smart.

The companion coloring books, Curious Girls Can Do Science and Brilliant Girls in STEM, turn that confidence into hands-on discovery through science, space, nature, invention, creativity, and problem-solving.

This series is a gentle way to start conversations about STEM, confidence, curiosity, and belonging, whether at home, in a classroom, in a homeschool setting, or as a thoughtful gift for a child who is still discovering what she loves.

Every purchase helps REDefine support children with fewer opportunities by creating and sharing STEM confidence-building materials, learning resources, and educational support for those who cannot easily access them.

Explore, buy, gift, or share the Girls in STEM Discovery Library:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2VH9RM?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1779810464&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin

30/05/2026

This week at REDefine, we are looking at the invisible systems that shape everyday life before we fully notice them.

A safe summer swim is not only about beautiful water. It depends on testing, monitoring, public health rules, environmental protection, and trust.

A girl deciding she is “not a science kid” is not just a personal preference. It can be the result of tiny signals about confidence, belonging, intelligence, and who science is imagined to be for.

And next week, we continue the thread with two new pieces: one on our first Youth Resilience Lab, where young people practised hope through roles, scenarios, and shared imagination; and one on open technology, the code beneath the floorboards of modern public life.

Safe water. Girls in STEM. Youth resilience. Open technology.

Four stories about the systems shaping our future, and why understanding them matters.

Subscribe to the REDefine weekly newsletter:
https://associationredefine.substack.com/subscribe

29/05/2026

Before a girl decides she is “not a science kid,” she may already have received years of quiet messages about where she belongs, what kind of intelligence counts, and whether her curiosity is enough.

In this essay, we explore girls’ STEM confidence, early gender stereotypes, narrow definitions of “smart,” and why emotional safety and belonging matter long before subject choices begin.

This piece also introduces the thinking behind REDefine’s Girls in STEM Discovery Library: a picture book and companion coloring series created to help girls see that there are many ways to be smart, and many doors into discovery.

https://open.substack.com/pub/associationredefine/p/before-she-decides-she-is-not-a-science-kid?r=6l8ed8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Gender, confidence, intelligence, and the early architecture of belonging in STEM