safety in online volunteering programs
suggestions for bringing together
youth and adult online volunteers
This information was last updated on January 8, 2000
Many agencies bring together adult volunteers and youth online with very positive results. The factors for success in these programs is a clear understanding by the agency about how adult volunteers will be screened and monitored (and strict implementation of these procedures), training for adult volunteers, staff and youth participants before online interactions take place, and an understanding of how online interactions will be archived and, possible, monitored, as well as conducting all volunteer programs within the mission of the organization.
If your agency is interested in bringing youth and adult volunteers together online, the Virtual Volunteering Project strongly recommends that you evaluate your current involvement of young people and adult volunteers in offline situations. What safeguards do you have in place already to protect participants in your programs? How do you screen volunteers? How do you supervise adult and youth interactions? Do adults work with youth in groups, or do they engage in one-to-one situations? How do you train adult volunteers in working with youth, and some of the issues that may come up in their interactions?
(See more information about and resources for online mentoring programs and other online direct service programs.)
If your agency does not already have a traditional, face-to-face program that brings together adult volunteers and youth, think carefully before starting an online program. At the very least, your agency staff should already have experience and expertise in managing face-to-face programs that bring together adult volunteers and youth.
Volunteers who work with children are subject to the same police/reference checks as in offline situations. Before bringing adults and children together in ANY service situation, on or offline, contact your local police department about the laws in your state or province regarding screening people who work with vulnerable populations. Also, contact your local Directors of Volunteers in Agencies (DOVIA) to find out about the situations in which these laws apply (for instance, it's usually not required to do criminal background checks of volunteers who work with groups of children in staff-supervised settings, if the volunteers will never be working one-on-one with a child, or if they will never be alone with the children without a staff member present and witnessing all activity).
Although there have been some highly publicized cases of abuse involving computers, reported cases of harassment and abuse because of a child's online activities are quite infrequent. Of course, like most crimes against children, many cases go unreported, especially if the child is engaged in an activity that he or she does not want to discuss with a parent. "Child Safety on the Information Highway," by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, notes "The fact that crimes are being committed online, however, is not a reason to avoid using these services. To tell children to stop using these services would be like telling them to forgo attending college because students are sometimes victimized on campus. A better strategy would be for children to learn how to be 'street smart' in order to better safeguard themselves in any potentially dangerous situation." (see the entire article)
Generally, the more public a program setting, the lower the risk is for youth by adult volunteers. However, many non-Internet-based programs, such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, bring adults and youth together safely in one-to-one situations, utilizing best practices around screening, training and supervision together with opportunities for a volunteer to build trust with the youth in his or her charge. Establishing these one-to-one, trusting relationships is an important part of their program's mission, but they also make sure they have the resources necessary to be vigilant in screening and checking up on volunteers.
If you are expanding an existing face-to-face mentoring program to include online communications, involving only those mentors who have been involved with your face-to-face program, you probably already have the necessary safeguards in place that will prevent abuse from happening online. However, you will still need to screen these adults to make sure they are good at communicating online; just because someone is great in face-to-face situations does not necessarily mean they can communicate well via the written word.
Assess your agency's past experience and expertise bringing together adults and youth, your existing screening and supervising methods, and the mission of your programs that bring together adults and youth to decide how best to adapt the following suggestions to your organization. See more information about and resources for setting up online direct service programs here on our web site, including suggestions for screening online mentors.
Protecting Identities
Some agencies that bring youth and adults together online, in groups or in one-to-one situations, do so in a way that allows participants to remain anonymous when interacting with each other. It may be appropriate for your agency to utilize one of these methods. An agency could (and many do):
- require adult volunteers and youth to each have a special e-mail address to be used exclusively for their work with each other, one that does not reveal personal information, such as last names. Make sure participants have not registered this e-mail address in any way that can be traced to a real world identity, such as the "Member Profile" on AOL or linking it off a personal Web page. However, make sure someone at your agency has a record of what e-mail address goes with what volunteer or client.
- set up a group list (via e-mail) that allows participants to post under a screen name or alias, and hides actual e-mail addresses. As always, make sure someone at your agency has a record of what screen name or alias goes with what volunteer or youth.
- require all volunteer and youth interactions to take place via a private online chat room, where participants use screen names or aliases to communicate with each other (these screen names should not be first and last names). Again, make sure someone at your agency has a record of what screen name or alias goes with what volunteer or client.
- explore programs that will allow users to send and receive e-mail to each other, without being able to see each other's actual e-mail address; this can be done through programs for purchase, and by setting up a script using perl.
To keep volunteers and clients anonymous, participants should not mention personal information in their online interactions that could allow someone to trace their identity, such as their real names, e-mail addresses, web sites, postal addresses, schools they attend or companies they work for, etc. This ensures that adults and youth cannot contact each other outside of a supervised online discussion system operated and observed by the agency, and that no inappropriate behavior can take place in one-to-one communications.
As mentioned earlier, volunteers, youth and their parents should be fully aware of any supervision taking place regarding online exchanges, your organization's policy in what constitutes inappropriate online behavior, and what your organization will do if inappropriate online behavior is exhibited. Also, if online exchanges between adult volunteers and youth are archived, volunteers, youth and their parents should be aware of who will (and won't) have access to these archives.
Creating a system where e-mail exchanges and chat room participation is monitored and archived is quite easy to do, and does ensure a great deal of safety. However, most programs that involve youth online archive messages for review only as needed, and instead rely on the screening and training of all participants, rather than online monitoring of e-mails, to ensure safety. Many programs consider monitoring e-mail exchanges as a form of electronic "eavesdropping," something that can adversely affect the trust between participants, particularly adults and youth. The course you take regarding monitoring e-mails depends on organization's culture, and your existing screening techniques.
If you do choose to monitor all e-mails, you will need trained staff or volunteers to supervise and review these online activities regularly. Also, you will need to make sure all participants understand that each message is reviewed.
The best way to assure that youth online volunteers are having positive online experiences is for both the volunteer manager and parents to stay in touch with what these volunteers are doing, to create an atmosphere of open communication where the youth is encouraged to share their online activities, and make sure youth know what they should do if they encounter something inappropriate or illegal online. Both parents and program managers should frequently ask youth what they are doing online, in a non-confrontational way. Ask them what their favorite sites are, what they've liked most, and if anything has made them uncomfortable.
Other Online Safety Suggestions
- As stated earlier, the more public a program setting, the lower the risk is for youth by adult volunteers. Your organization may want to prohibit volunteers and youth from one-to-one online communications, by limiting online interactions to a supervised, secure Web-based bulletin board and prohibiting the exchange of e-mail addresses and other contact information.
- Advise youth volunteers to NEVER give out identifying information -- home address, school name, age or telephone number -- in a public message such as chat or bulletin boards. And advise them when it is appropriate (if ever) to reveal any of this or other personal information to volunteers or other youth involved in your program.
- Tell youth volunteers never to arrange a face-to-face meeting with another computer user, even a fellow youth involved in your program, without parental permission and attendance if a meeting is going to occur. If your agency has a policy against such meetings, make sure this is clearly communicated to your volunteers, youth and parents.
- Encourage youth volunteers to let a key contact at your agency know if anything happens in the course of their online exchanges that makes them uncomfortable. Advise youth to never respond to messages that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, threatening or that make them feel uncomfortable. Encourage youth volunteers to report to the volunteer manager if they encounter such messages.
- Understand that youth online volunteers are NOT adults yet, and may not handle pressure, deadlines or communications the same way as adult volunteers (however, some teen volunteers will handle such things BETTER than some of your adult online volunteers, but we digress). Learning to deal with the various ways people communicate online will help in the management of all online volunteers, regardless of their age.
- Youth often will relate information about themselves online that they would not otherwise. Your online volunteers and supervising staff should be fully training in how to deal with various subjects youth may bring up, such as problems with parents and teachers. Volunteers and staff should also be fully trained in how to deal with serious behavior extremes and "red flags," such as talk of suicide or violence.
- Frequently remind volunteers, youth and parents about your agency's online safety precautions and policies!
The Virtual Volunteering Project also has safety suggestions for involving youth as online volunteers.
Other Suggested Resources
To start, we suggest that you follow the suggestions for involving youth as online volunteers. In addition, these guidelines below will also help you bring together adults and youth online safely:
- Cyberangels, http://www.cyberangels.org, based out of New York City, is a national program begun in 1995 by the Guardian Angels. It is the largest online safety and educational program in cyberspace. Its mission is to help create a user-friendly and safe online surfing experience for everyone. Cyberangels involves online volunteers in a variety of activities, including: Angels Match (mentoring young people), CyberMoms (monitoring cyber-playgrounds and parenting resources), Net Patrol (patroling the Internet looking for child pornography, stalkers, child predators, groups advocating child abuse and pedophilia, hate and bigotry sites and scam artists and, working together with SOC-UM, another well-respected child advocacy group, compiling and updating a list of sites harmful to children), and Teen Angels (helping to build and maintain a fun and safe place to "hang-out," teach the younger kids , and learn important skills).
Their screening and online safety systems for online volunteers are fully outlined on the Cyberangels Web site and are models for any organization looking to match volunteers with clients or potentially vulnerable populations online.
- Piracy, Pornography, Plagiarism, Propaganda, Privacy:
Teaching Children to Be Responsible Users of Technology
Protects Their Rights and the Rights of Others
An outstanding article by Merle Marsh, Ed.D. that outlines various ways students and teachers can protect themselves online from inappropriate communications (people trying to obtain passwords, predators, pornographic material, people and sites that promote hatred or violence, piracy, etc.). This article has many, many real life examples and links to additional resources.
- Freezone, http://www.freezone.com is a site for kids sponsored by Curiocity, a for-profit company based in Chicago. Freezone has code of conduct for all participants that is a great model for other agencies that are going to bring together youth and adults online.
- the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) provides numerous resources and information to prevent Internet Related Child Exploitation, including TIPS FOR TEENS and SAFETY GUIDELINES FOR CHILDREN, as well as background and statistics, parental guidelines, information about laws and legislation and links to other resources.
- Kidding Around? Be Serious! A Commitment to Safe Service Opportunities for Young People is published by the Nonprofit Risk Management Center and is available from Energize, Inc.. Chapters include : Risk Relevant Characteristics of Adolescents and Children, General Legal Principles Governing Interaction with Young People in Service, A General Risk Management Process for Dealing with Young People, Approaching Specific Laws and Risks Involving Young People in Service, and Service Scenarios Involving Young Participants.
- Screening Volunteers to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse: A Community Guide for Youth Organizations, is published by the National Assembly of National Voluntary Health and Social Welfare Organizations. It is also available from Energize, Inc..