News & Media
Latest updates, partnership announcements, and press resources from The Proudfoot Group.
Latest News
The Emirates Safer Internet Society (eSafe) and Algorethics AI Software Technology have signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing a framework of cooperation in digital child safety within the United Arab Emirates. The agreement was signed at eSafe’s Annual General Meeting before the organization’s board members and founders. eSafe is a UAE non-profit organization licensed under Ministerial Decree No. 915 of 2015 and has helped shape the country’s digital safety agenda for a decade through advocacy, awareness, education, and strategic partnerships.
Under the MOU, the parties will explore the potential application of RoseShield™ — an on-device child digital safeguarding system developed by ChildSafe.dev, Inc. — within the United Arab Emirates. RoseShield™ is designed to help identify indicators associated with harmful digital behaviors, including grooming, online exploitation, cyberbullying, and exposure to age-inappropriate content, while minimizing the transmission of user data to external systems. Both parties emphasized that the envisioned framework focuses exclusively on child safeguarding and digital wellbeing, and is not intended for behavioral advertising, commercial surveillance, or unrelated profiling.
Immediately following the signing, ChildSafe.dev Co-Founder Steaphen Antony Venansious delivered a live technical demonstration of RoseShield™ to eSafe board members and founders, focused on the system’s privacy-focused architecture and its localized alert flow to parents and institutional safeguarding leads. RoseShield™ is designed around the data minimization, purpose limitation, and security principles reflected in the UAE’s Federal Decree Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data and Federal Decree Law No. 26 of 2025.
Algorethics AI Software Technology, a Dubai-based AI software establishment, is collaborating with ChildSafe.dev, Inc. to explore the introduction of RoseShield™ to the United Arab Emirates. The Proudfoot Group serves as the strategic business development and go-to-market partner supporting Algorethics in the UAE market.
The Proudfoot Group has finalized the partnership structure between ChildSafe.dev, Inc. (CSD) and Online Safety Lab (OS Lab) to deploy the RoseShield™ Schools Protection Programme and ShieldConnect across South African schools. The executed agreement establishes OS Lab as CSD’s authorized channel partner for South Africa, with structured terms for performance-based earned exclusivity in the school channel, three-year non-circumvention protection on Introduced Schools, and a collections-based remittance model designed to align both organizations on long-term programme growth.
OS Lab CEO Mashilo Boloka has positioned the organization as the country’s external research partner for AI governance and online child safety in the wake of South Africa’s withdrawal of its Draft National AI Policy — a development that has elevated demand for credible, independent infrastructure capable of advancing the country’s child digital safety agenda. Within that policy environment, the RoseShield™ Schools Protection Programme arrives as the most operationally mature option available to South African schools and provincial education authorities.
RoseShield™ delivers on-device AI threat detection for grooming patterns, age solicitation, exploitation indicators, and off-platform contact attempts — with all processing performed locally on the child’s device and zero data collection. ShieldConnect, the supervised social and messaging platform powered by RoseShield™, will be available alongside the schools deployment to provide a verified-safe communication environment for South African students, both within and across cohorts.
The South Africa launch represents the largest international deployment of the Digital Child Safe Ecosystem™ to date and establishes the operational template for additional African market expansions. TPG continues to serve as ChildSafe.dev’s strategic business development and partnership layer for international deployment.
The Proudfoot Group has brokered a strategic partnership between Eveminet Communications Solutions Limited and ChildSafe.dev, Inc., bringing the RoseShield™ Schools Protection Programme and ShieldConnect supervised communication platform to Kenya. Under the agreement, Eveminet — founded by digital safety advocate and educator Evelyn Kasina — will serve as ChildSafe.dev’s authorized channel partner for the Kenyan market, with a structured two-phase deployment beginning in the Nairobi Metropolitan Area.
Eveminet brings more than a decade of operational presence in Kenya’s digital safety, education, and youth empowerment sectors, with deep relationships across Kenyan school networks, parent communities, and national stakeholders. The partnership is structured around a phased MOU and a Software License and Privacy Addendum (SLPA v2) that govern data handling, deployment standards, and joint accountability for safeguarding outcomes.
Phase 1 of the Kenya deployment focuses on schools across the Nairobi Metropolitan Area — Kenya’s most densely connected urban environment and one of the country’s most active school markets for emerging digital safety infrastructure. RoseShield™’s on-device architecture is well-matched to the variable connectivity environments of Kenyan schools, with all threat detection processed locally on student devices. ShieldConnect provides supervised peer communication infrastructure for participating schools, with full moderator visibility and zero off-platform pathways.
The Eveminet partnership extends ChildSafe.dev’s East African operational footprint and complements the existing Online Safety Foundation Uganda partnership announced earlier this year. Together, the two regional partnerships establish a coordinated East African deployment corridor for the Digital Child Safe Ecosystem™.
The Proudfoot Group has brokered a partnership between AfroLeadership, the Cameroonian civil society organization led by Charlie Martial Ngounou, and ChildSafe.dev, Inc. to launch the Africa Child Online Protection Programme (ACOPP) — beginning with Cameroon and structured for pan-African expansion. AfroLeadership will serve as the programmatic implementation partner for the Digital Child Safe Ecosystem™ deployment in Cameroon, with a tri-party framework adding MyData Global as the data governance and digital rights anchor of the programme.
ACOPP integrates the full ChildSafe.dev technology stack — RoseShield™ on-device child safety AI, ChildSafe.dev’s compliance and platform safeguarding infrastructure, and ShieldConnect supervised communication — alongside structured digital literacy curriculum for Cameroonian schools, youth-serving institutions, and parents. AfroLeadership brings established programmatic infrastructure, government and donor relationships across the Central African region, and a long track record of work at the intersection of civil society, technology, and human rights.
Charlie Martial Ngounou’s network across MyData Global, the International Aid Transparency Initiative, and People Powered positions AfroLeadership to anchor ACOPP within established international civil society and digital rights frameworks. The MyData Global addition to the partnership ensures that ACOPP’s data governance posture is aligned with global standards for individual data rights, consent, and children’s privacy from day one.
ACOPP is structured as a phased pan-African deployment — beginning with Cameroon as the proof-of-concept country and scaling regionally as additional national civil society partners join the programme. The initiative complements TPG’s existing African deployments through Online Safety Lab in South Africa, Eveminet in Kenya, and Online Safety Foundation Uganda — and contributes to the broader DCSE™ vision of a coordinated continental child digital safety architecture.
The Proudfoot Group’s Co-Founder and COO, G. Loy Ehlers III, has been selected as a judge for the SafeAI Cup — an international AI safety competition held in the United Arab Emirates. The SafeAI Cup convenes researchers, technologists, and youth innovators advancing safety-by-design AI, child digital safety, and ethical AI governance, with submissions evaluated by an international panel of judges drawn from the legal, technical, and child protection sectors.
Ehlers brings to the panel his work as TPG’s in-house counsel, his Founding Member seat on the SAFE Governance Council in the AI Governance & Regulatory portfolio, and the operational experience of leading TPG’s international child safety technology deployments — including active programs across the Middle East and North Africa region.
The selection reflects TPG’s growing presence in the Gulf’s AI governance and child safety ecosystem, building on its ongoing collaboration with the Emirates Safer Internet Society (eSafe) and complementing TPG’s expanding partnership network across the MENA region. TPG’s portfolio companies — including ChildSafe.dev — continue to engage UAE stakeholders on the deployment of safety-by-design technology in education, family, and youth-serving contexts.
Ehlers accepts AI Governance & Regulatory seat on the SAFE Council, an independent international governance body establishing enforceable standards for safeguarding in AI-mediated environments.
The Proudfoot Group (TPG), a venture studio focused on the development of technology and policy solutions in the digital child safety space, today announced that Co-Founder Loy Ehlers has accepted appointment as a Founding Member of the SAFE Governance Council, serving in the AI Governance & Regulatory seat.
SAFE — Safeguarding Architecture for Foundational Environments — is an independent governance body in formation, developing the first enforceable international standard for safeguarding in AI-mediated environments. Modeled on the separation-of-functions architecture of established global frameworks, SAFE separates standard-setting, certification, and implementation into three structurally independent layers, addressing the foundational conflict of interest inherent in platform self-regulation.
The SAFE Governance Council consists of six founding domain seats representing clinical child safeguarding, academic research, legal and regulatory expertise, technology and security, civil society and survivor advocacy, and insurance and risk. As holder of the AI Governance & Regulatory seat, Ehlers holds formal decision-making authority over the legal defensibility and cross-jurisdictional regulatory alignment of the SAFE standard, including lead authority over standards governing regulatory policy alignment and mandatory safeguarding reporting.
"What SAFE is building is governance infrastructure the field has needed for a long time. Platforms currently define, measure, and report their own safety. SAFE ends that arrangement. I'm honored to contribute to that work at the governance level." — Loy Ehlers
Ehlers brings to the role extensive experience in legal governance, regulatory strategy, and real-world deployment of child safety technology across domestic and international markets. His work through TPG's portfolio companies, including ChildSafe.dev, has produced on-device, privacy-preserving child safety systems currently in active pilot programs across West Africa and the United States.
The SAFE Council is currently in formation, with founding members drawn from across the child safety, technology, legal, and civil society sectors.
The Proudfoot Group has brokered a landmark international partnership between ChildSafe.dev, Inc. (CSD) and Online Safety Lab South Africa. Robert McNamara, CEO of ChildSafe.dev, and Dr. Mashilo Boloka, CEO of Online Safety Lab, have signed a formal agreement to bring the RoseShield™ Schools Protection Program, ShieldConnect, and RoseShield™ Home to South Africa — marking the first deployment of ChildSafe.dev's integrated child protection platform on the African continent. The partnership expands the Digital Child Safe Ecosystem™ into one of the world's most critical child safety markets and positions both organizations for coordinated deployment across Sub-Saharan Africa.
ChildSafe.dev has launched ShieldConnect, a supervised social and messaging platform purpose-built for children and youth — powered by RoseShield™ AI and certified through the ChildSafe.dev compliance framework. ShieldConnect gives young people a safe environment for communication, video calls, and peer connection, with institutional-grade oversight built in from the ground up.
Unlike consumer messaging apps that retrofit safety features onto platforms designed for adults, ShieldConnect was architected from day one around child protection. Every contact, conversation, and call passes through RoseShield™’s on-device and network-level AI detection — monitoring for grooming patterns, channel evasion attempts, off-platform redirection, cross-age contact risks, and exploitation indicators in real time. All flagged activity is routed to verified moderators through the ShieldConnect Moderator Portal, which provides full conversation logs, risk scoring, behavioral pattern analysis, and case management tools.
The platform is designed for institutional deployment — NGOs, schools, youth programs, and international organizations that need a verified-safe communication channel for the young people in their care. The World Vision International integration demonstrated in ShieldConnect’s moderator dashboard shows exactly how cross-program youth communication — including international connections between WVI cohorts — can be supervised, logged, and protected without sacrificing the authentic peer connection that makes youth programs effective.
ShieldConnect expands the ChildSafe.dev product family alongside RoseShield™ (on-device child safety AI) and the ChildSafe.dev compliance API — completing a full-stack institutional child safety infrastructure from device to platform to communication. The Proudfoot Group serves as ChildSafe.dev’s strategic business development and go-to-market partner. Institutional and NGO inquiries welcome at info@theproudfootgroup.com.
The Proudfoot Group has brokered a strategic partnership between the Online Safety Foundation Uganda (OSFU) and ChildSafe.dev, Inc., bringing RoseShield™ on-device child safety technology to schools in Kampala for the first time. The partnership launches with a structured pilot at Sayidina Abubakar Secondary School — with OSFU's Dr. Sulaiman Kawooya, Director of E-Safety, leading ground-level implementation alongside ChildSafe.dev's technology team.
The pilot arrives at a critical moment for Uganda's capital. Uganda's 2024 National Census found that children under 18 make up 50% of the country's 45.9 million people. Kampala carries the highest secondary school enrollment rate in the country at 52%, according to UNICEF — and as internet access expands rapidly across Kampala's school network, children's exposure to online grooming, exploitation, and harmful content is growing without corresponding protection infrastructure in place.
RoseShield™ is built for exactly this environment. Its on-device AI architecture requires no consistent cloud connectivity, making it deployable in schools with variable internet infrastructure. All threat detection — grooming patterns, age solicitation, explicit content, off-platform contact requests — processes locally on the device, with zero data collection. The pilot will establish the deployment model and MEL framework for scaling across Kampala's broader school network, with national deployment a stated objective of the partnership.
Uganda's approximately 15 million school-age children represent one of the most significant addressable markets for child digital safety technology on the African continent. The OSFU partnership positions ChildSafe.dev as the first on-device child safety platform with an operational institutional footprint in East Africa — and establishes the evidence base for replication across the region. TPG will continue to serve as ChildSafe.dev's strategic business development and partnership layer for East African deployment.
The Proudfoot Group has formalized a strategic business development partnership with Native Brigade, the veteran-led technology company behind Sentinel Guard™ and Adams Watch™. Under the agreement, TPG will serve as Native Brigade's strategic business development and partnership layer — connecting its child protection and community safety platforms with government agencies, law enforcement organizations, and institutional partners. The partnership expands TPG's child protection technology portfolio and positions Native Brigade for accelerated deployment across tribal nations and underserved communities.
The Proudfoot Group announces the formal launch of the Digital Child Safe Ecosystem™ (DCSE™) Zimbabwe pilot — a comprehensive, multi-layer child protection deployment integrating RoseShield™ on-device AI, ChildSafe.dev platform safeguarding, structured digital literacy curriculum, and community safety infrastructure. CODAZIM serves as the programmatic authority holder for the deployment, which targets a large Phase 1 cohort of school-age children. The launch marks the first national-scale deployment of the DCSE™ framework and establishes the evidence base for replication across additional countries.
Press & Media
For press inquiries, interview requests, speaking engagements, and partnership announcements, contact TPG's communications team directly. We respond to all media inquiries within one business day.
info@theproudfootgroup.com Download Media KitThe Proudfoot Group LLC
Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB)
Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB)
Child Safety Technology · AI Governance · National Security · Nonprofit Education
In the Press
TPG leadership and partner platforms have been featured in the following publications. Links will be added as they become available.
Publication · Link Pending
Coverage of TPG's work in child safety technology and the DCSE™ deployment. Link forthcoming.
Publication · Link Pending
Coverage of TPG's work in AI governance and veteran-led technology. Link forthcoming.
Publication · Link Pending
Additional press coverage. Link forthcoming.