Not on Our Watch TX has partnered with the Girl Scouts of Central Texas and the National Center of Missing & Exploited Children to launch a new curriculum.
AUSTIN, Texas — A new safety initiative aims to protect young Texas girls from online predators by empowering them with tools to keep themselves safe.
Not on Our Watch TX has partnered with the Girl Scouts of Central Texas and the National Center of Missing & Exploited Children (NICMC) to launch a new curriculum to teach Girl Scouts important online safety skills in exchange for a new patch.
How does it work?
Not on Our Watch TX co-founder Lisa Beth Thomas said troop leaders or parents can go online and find the patch, and there are three steps to the curriculum.
The first is “Discovery,” where the girls find out what it means to be online groomed by a predator, learn what type of information they should not share online and gain other general online safety skills.
The next step is “Connect,” where the girls learn how to identify trusted adults, what it means to be a good “digital citizen” and more.
Finally, the third step is “Take Action,” where the girls take what they’ve learned and teach their troop and spread the message at their schools, churches and in their communities.
Thomas said even though the patch officially launched on April 20, already 513 girls have earned the patch in Central Texas because their parents or troop leaders found the curriculum online.
Why launch this program?
Thomas said AI-driven online exploitation is on the rise. She said according to data from the NICMC, in all of 2024, there were 6,835 reports of AI-generated exploitation. In just the first half of 2025, that number was 440,419.
Thomas said it’s important for parents to be aware of how threats change online.
“Our slogan is, ‘You can’t protect against what you’re not aware of.’ So if parents don’t know, they don’t know to talk to their kids about it. We’ve found, through research, one out of five kids last year said they were approached by a predator online. So we have parents all the time saying, ‘It’s not my kid; it can’t be.’ Yeah, it could be, or some kid you love,” Thomas said. “Back in the day, at my age, we were told to stay away from the white van. Well, now the cellphone’s a white van. They [kids] go to bed with a predator right there.”
Thomas also shared a powerful piece of advice she heard from a mother whose daughter died by suicide after she was sextorted. She said the mother noted that parents often tell their children not to do things, so when something happens, the kids are afraid to say anything.
“She said, ‘If I’d only known to say don’t, don’t, don’t, but if you do, come to me. I’ve got your back. We will take care of whatever it is. We’ll make this work together. You will not get in trouble if you’ve done something that you’re worried about, embarrassed about,'” Thomas said. “I love that because I said that to my kids. And so, I know they were afraid to talk to me. So she said open up the line of communication. That’s what the detectives, FBI, all of them say: Talk to your kids. Talk to them as early as the age of 2.”
