Young volunteers working for Shapers for Cyber Care. Credit: Shapers for Cyber Care
Shapers for Cyber Care
Making cybersecurity education accessible for all
Cybersecurity education in New York City (NYC) is abundant, as long as you are a professional. It lives online, in corporate training portals and degree programmes, in language that assumes a level of comfort many older adults were never given the chance to build.
, an initiative that supports older adults and vulnerable New Yorkers as they navigate an increasingly risky digital world, does the opposite. It runs 60- to 90-minute workshops in churches, older adult centers, and public libraries. Sessions are taught in English and Spanish, in plain language, over coffee or lunch before a weekly bingo session or an older adult field trip around Manhattan.
"We meet people where they are, physically and emotionally," says Shapers for Cyber Care, which is made up of many young volunteers determined to help people develop the knowledge and tools to protect themselves from cybercrimes - a global threat that has grown into a thriving, highly profitable industry that is estimated to cost trillions of dollars annually, according to the .
Cyber Care teaches without victim shaming
The curriculum, written by Dr. Laura Sang Hee Scherling of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, grew out of research for her book, The Future of Hacking: The Rise of Cybercrime and the Fight to Keep Us Safe (Bloomsbury, 2025).
Interviewing cybersecurity professionals and victims across places as wide as New York, South Africa, and India, she found that most cybersecurity training begins by assuming the learner possesses basic cybersecurity awareness education. For the people who need it most, that assumption is already wrong.
So Cyber Care starts somewhere else. Sessions cover scam recognition, cyber hygiene, identity theft, and AI deepfakes, and the classes are built for people who may have already been targeted and carry that weight into every interaction when they look at their screen or open an email. Participants share their own experiences without judgment and end up teaching each other. Many participants come back for a second and third time to strengthen their personal defenses against cybercrime.
Shapers for Cyber Care session in New York City. Credit: Shapers for Cyber Care
Shaper for Cyber Care teaches participants to be teachers
Between 2026 and 2027, Cyber Care in partnership with Global Shapers Manhattan will carry out a pedagogical model for cybersecurity awareness education that is designed to multiply.
Manhattan Shapers will train on the curriculum and then carry it into their own neighborhoods. Participants become informal resources for their neighbours, extending cybersecurity awareness well past the room where the workshop took place. The curriculum itself is built to be adapted by workshop leaders who want to teach it.
Along with expanding across NYC, plans are also underway to bring Cyber Care and its curriculum to partner organizations in Bangkok and Mae Sot, Thailand, and to add a module about the human trafficking networks that supply much of the world's online scam industry.
Recognizing its potential impact, Shapers for Cyber Care won the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Innovation Prize.
"Cybercrime is not only financial. It is emotional, isolating, and growing fast. Security is something people should be able to feel, not just something they are told they have," says Shapers for Cyber Care.