SOLOS History

For Merlyn Horton, the Safe OnLine Outreach Project was the next logical step to take when youth, technology and youth work converged. As a youth outreach worker who had worked with sexually exploited, drug-affected and street-entrenched youth for 15 years, Horton saw the potential implications of the internet for sexual offending, recruitment into commercial sexual exploitation and the emerging need for responsible adults and human service professionals to respond intelligibly.

SOLOS began as a one-year project to create curriculum for youth workers about online sexual exploitation in 2001/02. Funded by the National Crime Prevention Centre, the outcome document — Introduction to Online Sexual Exploitation — was published in 2002.

The Safe OnLine Outreach Society was founded that same year by Merlyn Horton as a stand alone non-profit society to continue and support this work.

In the last nine years, SOLOS has become a leader in educational school-based presentations, teaching media skills, critical thinking and internet safety to over 65,000 students, parents and teachers. SOLOS has an exceptional reputation for up-to-date, research-based materials and usable resources distributed through it's website, database of articles and new items. Hundreds of thousands have accessed SOLOS blogs, links and online social media.

SOLOS has develop various other programs and documents available here on this site.

See our Annual Report for more details.

The Safe OnLine Outreach Society is a federal charitable organization (Canada #86021 9641 RR0001) and a registered non-profit society (British Columbia #S45067).