BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

On 2 January 2008 Lidia Stępińska-Ustasiak joined the PR team operating within the UPC Poland Communications and Public Affairs Department, which acts in the field of media relations and implements social programs targeted at counteracting technological exclusion, such as "UPC e-Senior Academy" and "UPC e-Safety Academy". In UPC Lidia Stępińska-Ustasiak is responsible for the company’s activity in the field of outside communications and media relations.

Lidia Stępińska-Ustasiak has 11 years of experience in public relations. She graduated from the Applied Social Studies Department of the Warsaw University and the Social Studies Department of the Centre for Social Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Until December 2007 she worked for PTK Centertel (Orange), at the position of a communications manager. She was gaining her professional experience, inter alia, in Amica Wronki, as well as in Polish and international PR agencies.

Stępińska-Ustasiak hosts a PR on the Web course at the Postgraduate PR College (Warsaw School of Economics).

29 September, Tuesday, 14.45 – 17.00 

UPC Polska, the leading triple service provider (digital television, Internet and landline telephony) has been implementing, since 2008, a social educational program concerned with the safety of children and youths on the Web. The "e-Safety Academy" is targeted for the parents, teachers, tutors and librarians. It is in agreement with the company’s mission – "For Everyone. It’s simple." In 2009 UPC conducted, in cooperation with Wydawnictwo Szkolne PWN, a workshop for primary and junior high school IT teachers from seven Polish voivodeships. Good reception of the workshop as well as very favorable opinions expressed by its participants have encouraged the company to share its knowledge and experience on a wider scale. UPC signed an agreement with ZHP, Poland’s largest volunteer organization, under which the company has trained ZHP’s instructors, making available its own teaching method, educational materials (“Web safety. Basics for the entire family") and made available, to ZHP, UPC’s Internet access facilities in nine Polish cities. The program of cooperation between UPC and ZHP has been praised by Mrs. Anna Streżyńska, Chairwoman of the Office of Electronic Communications, who has extended her patronage over the campaign. The “Web safety. Basics for the entire family” publications by UPC and INSAFE were handed over, free of charge, to several dozen school throughout Poland. The books are used to train the teachers, tutors and parents. In the framework of cooperation with Wydawnictwo Szkolne PWN, the brochure’s electronic version in the form of a newsletter was sent to more than ten thousand primary and junior high school teachers. UPC has also created a universal website, where each Internet user may learn the crucial information concerning Web safety, download – free of charge – the “Web safety....” book, and find out where to look for help and support in difficult situations concerning improper Internet content or behaviors. All of UPC’c efforts, which are carried out with the well-being and the safety of the company’s customers taking advantage of its Internet provision services, have been awarded with the country’s first Safer Internet Certificate granted by the Office of Electronic Communications.