Tag Archives: safety

What is meant by “safety policies” for volunteering programs?

Leave a reply
two primitive-looking images, like petroglyphs, one holding an umbrella over them both

Any organization that involves volunteers needs to have safety policies and procedures to protect both volunteers and those that they serve, and if the volunteers interact with vulnerable people or could be in one-to-one situations with ANYONE, there needs to be even more extensive safety policies and procedures.

What do safety policies look like?

Screening steps for volunteers could be the volunteer applicants:

  • providing real names (not just nicknames or screen names), residential addresses (not just a PO Box), phone number, etc.
  • providing the name of the volunteer’s current employer and previous two employers, or the name of where they are currently enrolled in school and how many hours they are taking.
  • answering the questions “why do you want to volunteer?” and “What do you hope to experience as a volunteer” and “tell me about a time you interacted with a person in crisis.”
  • providing professional and academic reference checks (employers, teachers)
  • providing personal reference checks (friends, family)
  • undergoing a criminal background check
  • undergoing a credit check
  • being in a probation period and extra observation at first
  • going through required training

Supervision for volunteers could be:

  • Volunteers required to use an email the organization has set up and know that ALL emails are archived and could be reviewed at any time.
  • Volunteers required to work in pairs or paired with a staff person.
  • Staff that created the volunteering role meeting with the volunteer once a month or once a quarter AND meeting with other volunteers and clients about that volunteer’s performance.

Policies for volunteers could be:

  • Never being alone, one-on-one, with another volunteer, a paid staff person or a client.
  • Never using any electronic communications avenues other than a specific email or online platform (no texting among volunteers, for instance).
  • A prohibition on a volunteer giving personal contact info to any client.
  • A mandatory reporting by the volunteer if a client gives that volunteer personal contact info or tries to contact that volunteer outside of agreed-to communications avenues (WhatsApp, TikTok, etc.)
  • Mandatory reporting to management of suspicions of inappropriate behavior relating to sex by volunteers and clients.

etc.

Again, these are just EXAMPLES. And what safety requirements a volunteer beach cleanup group is going to have is NOT going to be the same as what a mentoring program for young people will have.

But whatever you have at your organization, whatever you require, should be detailed on your organization’s web site – NO EXCEPTIONS. And if they are not, it has to be assumed you don’t have them. And if you are recruiting volunteers to work with vulnerable groups or one-on-one with anyone, your post is going to be deleted here unless you have info on your web site on the steps you employ to keep volunteers and those they were safe.

Safety in Service Delivery/Client Support by Online Volunteers.

Your right to turn away volunteers who won’t adhere to safety measures (& your right to refuse to volunteer at an unsafe program)

My wakeup call regarding risks in volunteering programs – a blog that may change your mind about how to think about risks in volunteer engagement programs

Letting Fear Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky” (a guest blog by me for Energize, Inc. and Susan Ellis)

Have you enabled a Larry Nassar?

Keeping volunteers safe – & keeping everyone safe with volunteers (includes a list of my favorite resources regarding safety in programs that involve volunteers and/or children; I consider many of these resources mandatory reading for managers of volunteers

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Is trauma while volunteering abroad inevitable?

Leave a reply
graphic representing volunteers performing various service activities.

On one of the many online communities I’m on, one for people interested in serving as Peace Corps members, someone wrote about wanting to serve but also wanting to know what resources there would be “given the unfortunate, yet seemingly inevitable, traumatic experiences” a volunteer is probably going to face.

One of the responses was particularly excellent:

I want to challenge one point: trauma is not inevitable. It’s a dangerous framing to prospective service and sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Service is stressful, but it is not always traumatic.

I really liked this response, and the rest of it. I see a lot of people who want to work or volunteer abroad, in developing or post-conflict countries, in humanitarian initiatives, and they say things implying that the worst trauma-inducing events – assault, theft, sexual exploitation, life-altering injury, intense hostility from locals, witnessing violence or extreme, dire poverty – is inevitable.

None of that is inevitable in working or volunteering abroad in humanitarian efforts. It’s not inevitable working or volunteering in your own country. Could any of those circumstances happen to you? Yes – abroad or at home. Does any of that happen? Yes – abroad or at home. But none of it is inevitable.

I do believe in being prepared for The Worst – at home or abroad. It’s why, on the section of my web site about travel, I talk about always having a plan: what would you do if faced with the absolute worst circumstances, and the aftermath, while abroad? Do you know exactly who should call and where you should go if you are in danger or have experienced trauma? As someone who has frequently traveled abroad to not-so-stable countries, I have plans, even for being kidnapped, and have discussed them with loved ones. The likelihood of ever needing to employ those plans is small, but it gives me comfort to know I have a plan.

What’s much more likely when serving abroad: feelings of loneliness and isolation. Feeling that you don’t have an outlet or escape to take a mental health break. I had an Afghan colleague say, “It must be so hard for you here. I have my family to go home to each night. You have nothing.” It was a gut punch because it was true! It was one of the reasons I started going to a coffee shop frequented by expats every Friday: I was spending WAY too much time alone outside of work hours.

What is also much more common is a feeling of helplessness or disillusionment with your service. Realizing that one person really can’t change the world, and that your work may not actually transform the lives of anyone significantly, is not just humbling, it can make you question everything you think about yourself, the work of humanitarians, and, well, all of humanity. It’s a reality check many people that want to work or volunteer abroad aren’t prepared for.

As noted by that aforementioned Reddit poster:

Peace Corps volunteers have to be resilient and develop those self-management tools during service. That is a fundamental requirement when living remotely with limited resources.

This is true of anyone that wants to serve away from home, and especially in another country, even one that is quite peaceful and stable.

The responder goes on to say:

The best thing to do is discover and train your resilience today: Learn coping mechanisms. Develop healthy habits. Be disciplined with your time. Learn to accept what you cannot change and be content with what you can. Set boundaries. Exercise. Learn to maintain a positive attitude. Be selfless. Arguably, this is the most important thing. Service is going to be a path you’ll have to walk alone. It is demanding and mentally challenging, but you have to be strong.

And I second all of this! If you really want to be effective working or volunteering abroad in humanitarian contexts, you can’t assume you have these skills; you have to take a hard look at yourself and how you cope now with stress, strife, frustrations and, indeed, trauma.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

High Impact Virtual Volunteering

Leave a reply

The world will get safer as more people get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the infectious disease which causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but health officials are saying over and over that our world is going to stay the way it is for most of 2021, and probably well into 2022: face masks will continue to be needed in order not to spread this or other viruses, even if you aren’t sick from such. We will need to continue to avoid groups of people, including large crowds. We will need to socially distance. People vulnerable to the illness will need to continue to be protected.

And while lots of precautions will, I hope, continue to be taken to ensure onsite volunteering can be done safely amid the ongoing threat from COVID-19, it also means that virtual volunteering – using the Internet to support and engage volunteers – is going to still be necessary, even for organizations that avoided the practice for decades. And the reality is that virtual volunteering – a practice that’s more than 35 years old and that thousands of organizations were leveraging long before the global pandemic – is a tool that creates an avenue to involve volunteers that could not be involved otherwise and is an avenue of volunteering that many people actively seek out even when there isn’t a dangerous virus lurking about.

High Impact virtual volunteering has always been something many volunteers have sought. While many consultants, especially from the private sector, say the trend for volunteers is towards micro-tasks, I disagree: I hear people saying they want to make a real impact in volunteering, an investment of time that makes a real difference, that isn’t just about minutes or hours done, and isn’t about a check box of tasks completed. I’ve been talking about the desire of volunteers for this kind of deeper-investment virtual volunteering since 2015, including in this blog, the future of virtual volunteering? Deeper relationships, higher impact. In that blog, I said:

When volunteers interact with clients directly, it’s a highly personal activity, no matter the mission of the organization. These volunteer roles involve building and maintaining trust and cultivating relationships – not just getting a task done. It takes many hours and a real commitment – it can’t be done just when the volunteer might have some extra time. And altogether, that means that, unlike microvolunteering, these direct service virtual volunteering roles aren’t available to absolutely anyone with a networked device, Internet access and a good heart. These roles discriminate: if you don’t have the skills and the time, you don’t get to do them. And, believe it or not, the very high bar for participation is very appealing to a growing number of people that want to volunteer.

I always have to remind people at this point that I’m not opposed to microvolunteering – online tasks that take just a few minutes or hours for a volunteer to complete, require little or not training of the online volunteer, and require no ongoing commitment. I’ve been writing about microvolunteering before it was called that – I gave it the name byte-sized volunteering back in the 1990s, but the name didn’t stick. If you want to give lots of people a taste of your program, with an eye to cultivating those people into longer-term volunteers, and/or donors, and you have the time to create and support microvolunteering assignments, great, go for it!

But I continue to hear and see a growing number of comments, especially young people, saying they want more than just a “quickie” volunteering experience. They want more than number-of-hours volunteering and a list of tasks that need done. They want something high-impact. They want to feel like they have really made a difference. They want to make a real connection with the organization and those, or the mission, it serves. And not just for virtual volunteering! They also want it for onsite volunteering.

I’ve talked about the factors for success in what I’ve called direct-contact or direct-support online volunteers since the 1990s, first via the Virtual Volunteering Project. I have continued to try to highlight those kinds of virtual volunteering roles and tasks specifically via the news section of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki and this list of online mentoring programs (all of which I maintain with no support and no funding to do so). And it was very satisfying to hear directly from programs involving online volunteers recently and to hear them confirm the best practices I’ve promoted for years.

When a university contacted me this year about what their student volunteering abroad program could look like online instead, a program where students provided medical help with medical and public health professionals in other countries, I put together a quick list of what this could look like, based on these resources I’d continued to maintain, and I’ve been adding to it ever since. This list of what high-impact virtual volunteering looks like, with links to examples, is for people seeking ideas for an online project that will mobilize online volunteers in activities that lead to a sustainable, lasting benefit to a community or cause, particularly for a community or audience that is at-risk or under-served. It was created especially for programs looking for ways to engage online volunteers in high-responsibility, high-impact tasks focused on communities in the developing world. Note that these ideas absolutely can be adapted for remote volunteering within the same country where the online volunteers live as well – “remote” could mean across town rather than around the world.

Also see:

Hearing Directly from Programs Involving Online Volunteers

How will SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 affect volunteering abroad?

Safety in Virtual Volunteering

Also see:

Also, the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement can help you better work with people online – specifically volunteers. These can be volunteers in short-term, “microvolunteering” tasks or longer-term, more high-responsibility roles, like what is highlighted here in the blog you are reading now. These can be volunteers who do some or most of their service onsite, at your organization, or volunteers who do most or all of their service remotely, rarely or ever onsite and in-person with you. This book was helpful long before the global pandemic spurred so many organizations to, at last, embrace virtual volunteering. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Virtual volunteering is more than “making cards for the sick/elderly”

Leave a reply

The proliferation of projects right now during the global pandemic where people write cards or postcards for elderly people, people in residential care facilities, patients in hospitals, people who are homebound, etc., is astounding. The number of schools and corporations proudly touting this as “virtual volunteering” is equally astounding.

Cards can be nice. When my grandmother turned 100, my sister and I coordinated with our friends so that she would get more than 100 birthday cards via postal mail for her birthday, and she did, and she was delighted. It was nice. I’m glad we did it.

But that thrill lasted a day or two.

What she enjoyed far more, on a weekly basis:

  • Learning to play Wii.
  • Learning to use a tablet to download free books.

I wish it had dawned on me to get her signed up on Facebook so we could have played Scrabble together. I wish I had figured out if we both got the same episode of Jeopardy at the same time, so we could have live-chatted during it on WhatsApp.

What I’m getting at is this: are these “let’s write and send cards for the homebound” something that the recipients REALLY want, or is much more substantial virtual volunteering and online collaboration what we should be shooting for?

What about remote programs where volunteers:

  • Ask for their stories about particular periods in history: Where were you when the first men landed on the moon? How did you know that happened? What was your life like during the civil rights movement? Tell me about September 11, 2001? What was it like to go to grade school when you were a kid – did you walk to school? What did you wear? What if those sessions were recorded and made available via the local library or the local historical society, or spliced together into a video to share on YouTube, or edited into weekly or monthly podcasts?
  • Cook together with the person they are visiting remotely: each comes up with a relatively simple recipe, tells the other all the ingredients that might be needed, and one dish is cooked one week and another dish is cooked a week or two later?
  • Teach a person how to use Wikipedia, or even how to edit Wikipedia. What if they worked together on improving a Wikipedia article about local history?
  • Play free online word games together, like Scrabble? Or play even more advanced, free games together? Don’t be surprised to find out a lot of seniors are already engaged in online gaming.
  • Make something together while you are online together: origami, paper hats, lightsabers from toilet paper rolls (you don’t think seniors are Star Wars fans?!?), some other simple, crafty thing made from things you both can easily get your hands on… Again, record the session, splice all the sessions into something fun and share on YouTube.
  • Have an online book club, where seniors and teens all read the same book and then talk about it together online.

In short, volunteers and corporate social responsibility program managers: quit thinking you know what seniors want and what will make them happy, based on what’s most convenient for YOU. Don’t think of seniors and people in residential homes sitting there passively waiting for your uplifting message. Think about ENGAGEMENT. Think about INTERACTION. Think about what the seniors or patients might want, not primarily what you THINK they want. Have you asked them? That might be a great place to start.

Here’s a very long list of virtual volunteering roles and activities. Writing cards isn’t on it, by the way.

And here’s a seven-minute video where I say most of the things I’ve just said in this blog – and more!

August 3, 2021 update: An example of a high quality digital volunteering/friendly visitor program born out of COVID: It was oh-sorefreshing to learn about the Digital Buddies initiative in Scotland, which started during the Covid 19 pandemic to enable older people in the Scottish Borders to connect digitally with friends, family, groups & the wider world. Digital Buddies teamed the older people up with a digital buddy, often a family member, friend or neighbor, and they did not do it simply by creating a web site and giving people each other’s Skype IDs and hoping for the best. The volunteer buddy supports the person with whatever they wish to learn to do at their own pace, with the aid of SEVERAL step-by-step picture instructions and the assistance of staff. We also provide a tablet and access to the internet to those who do not have access to technology. There are just 15 older people in the Borders participating in Digital Buddies. Many were apprehensive at the beginning, as they worried they might not remember or manage. With the help from their buddies they are now regularly using their digital device to video call with friends and family, join local groups, meetings or classes that have moved online in Covid19, attend virtual religious services, do their shopping, and much more. Resources provided to participants include how to access the accessibility settings on the tablet devices used, how to charge the devices and use them to listen to podcasts, access email, etc., as well as digital inclusion tips.

My favorite part of the program is this:

When we were looking for buddies we weren’t looking for IT specialists, we were looking for people who:

  • Had a little spare time.
  • Were patient.
  • Were comfortable explaining in non jargon terms.
  • Knew how to do the basics on touch screen devices – we try to match people who have knowledge of similar devices.
  • Could commit to supporting someone for at least 6 months.

Yes, six months. Not just a few weeks. And not a few-minutes-a-week commitment: volunteers were expected to engage in something meaningful and impactful.

See Setting up a Digital Buddies project – What we Learned for more.

It’s the sign of a quality virtual volunteering program that when an initiative produces such a report, talking about what’s worked and what hasn’t and what comes next.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

For much more detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

On a similar themes:

Vanity Volunteering: All About the Volunteer.

*Another* Afghanistan Handicraft program? Really?

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Your right to turn away volunteers who won’t adhere to safety measures (& your right to refuse to volunteer at an unsafe program)

1 Reply

Nonprofits, schools, charities, NGOs: you have every legal and moral right to require onsite volunteers to properly wear masks or face shields during service, and to ask a volunteer to leave that refuses to comply.

Just make sure that you have communicated with volunteers in multiple ways about the requirement at your volunteer sites for face masks and social distancing and any other safety measures related to COVID-19 or any other issue of concern. You should:

  • Email all volunteers directly.
  • Include the notice in your regular newsletter.
  • Add the notice to your web pages regarding volunteering with your program.
  • Post it to your online discussion group for volunteers.
  • Send a reminder to all volunteers the day before they are going to show up onsite for volunteering service.

If you can text volunteers with a reminder, do that too! You may want to do a YouTube video of your Executive Director stating this policy, for a more personal touch – as well as to show that this is a policy that is supported from the very top.

These are the requirements I believe programs should adhere to during this pandemic.

And here’s a sample of communication via email, in your newsletter or via a video:

As we have all probably heard by now, wearing a mask helps to drastically reduce the spread of COVID-19. By your wearing a mask or face shield, you help to prevent others from catching the Novel Coronavirus – remember, you may have it but not be showing any symptoms, and even if you are not showing symptoms, you can spread this virus. The safety of our volunteers, clients and staff is of paramount importance to our program, and it is only if we all wear masks or face shields and socially distance that we can continue to operate at least some of our onsite programs. This link goes to our state’s public health agency and has guidance on the proper way to wear a mask. (add in the link).

If you cannot or will not wear a face mask or face shield, you will not be able to volunteer onsite with our program at this time, but you are welcomed to help us as an online volunteer by… (add in your virtual volunteering roles here).

If you don’t feel comfortable volunteering onsite now, we completely understand, and we hope you will consider volunteering with us online by… (add in your virtual volunteering roles here).

If you have any questions, please contact… (add that person’s name and contact info).

Thank you so much for all of your volunteer support. We will get through this together, and we’re committed to all of us getting through this.

Also:

  • Your paid staff need to adhere to the same rules regarding face masks and social distancing.
  • If you think some volunteers may not be able to access a proper facemask, provide links on where to find free or affordable facemasks.
  • Tell the person who will see volunteers first at a site what they should say to someone who approaches and is not wearing a mask, or is not wearing it properly, and to whom they should report anyone who becomes upset or refuses.
  • Thank volunteers repeatedly for wearing a face mask or face shield correctly.

You may lose volunteers over this policy, but losing volunteers because of how they feel about a public health issue is far preferable to spreading COVID-19 to volunteers, clients or staff.

On the flip side, volunteers have every right to refuse to volunteer onsite at a program that does not require staff and clients to properly wear masks or face shields. Before you volunteer onsite, ask the program what measures are in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Again, these are the requirements I believe programs should adhere to during this pandemic. If you decide you cannot safely volunteer, write an email saying so (and you may want to write the board of directors as well).

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Three resources for your COVID-19-related volunteering

Leave a reply

Lots of nonprofits, charities, government programs and others are rapidly re-aligning their volunteer engagement because of COVID-19 and home quarantines:

  • Converting some programming and volunteer engagement online.
  • Launching new virtual “home visit” or online mentoring programs.
  • Mobilizing volunteers to support people in-need because of home quarantine, because of the stress of their professional work in response to the pandemic, etc.

Here are three resources for these new or re-imagined efforts:

(1) This short video about the importance of safety measures in any virtual volunteering programs, including virtual “home visits”, virtual visits to those in senior homes, etc. Spoiler alert: it’s my video.

(2) After a natural disaster – earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, etc. – affected areas can be flooded with spontaneous volunteers. They present a lot of challenges – and even dangers. COVID-19 is presenting a similar flood of spontaneous volunteers. How to deal with that flood of goodwill? These resources on dealing with spontaneous volunteers in natural disasters can offer some guidance.

(3) These recommendations regarding volunteers in post-disaster situations (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc.) from Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations, in Disaster Survivors’ Experiences with Disaster Volunteers by Christa Frances Lopez / Christa López Sandelier (it’s her doctoral dissertation for Walden University).

Except:

The data from the findings confirm that disaster survivors had positive and negative interactions with the disaster volunteers. The disaster survivors weighted the positive experiences over the negative experiences. Participant 8 stated that she did not want to talk about the negative experiences, while another was very specific about concerns about the disaster volunteers’ skill levels and fitness for working in the climate in Texas. There were several recommendations for training of disaster volunteers with a clear expression from the research participants that stopping to listen and have clear communication with the disaster survivors was a high priority, as stated by Participant 1, “Listen to the people.” While Participant 3 stated, “just know that the people that you’re working for or they’re in a bad place and you’re there to make it better and always remember, to smile.” Participant 6 mentioned,

It depends on the tenure or the experience of the group coming in. Whereas you have other folks who just have a heart and they show up and mistakes do come out of those, they walk into situations- working on projects that weren’t priorities like trees down in yards when other houses had trees fallen on roofs into bedrooms. And so that kind of misstep of a volunteer coming to do good being directed by the homeowner as opposed to being directed by a group. I saw a lot of that happen because people show up, they don’t know where to go. They end up getting questioned in by a group of neighbors that are out front. Well, there needs to be a leader of each group who has some knowledge of construction or safety.

This emphasized the need for effective volunteer coordination with focus on organization and leadership for the established volunteer groups and the emerging volunteers so that work can be prioritized….

The cultural fit using Campinha-Bacote’s (2002) model of culture competence may be best applied in the future at the volunteer reception centers where coordinators of the volunteers could provide training before the volunteers go into the field to work. This training could involve an intake assessment that asks questions about the volunteer and their reasons and intent for coming to volunteer for that particular disaster. This would help volunteers look inward and fit within the first construct of cultural awareness. The questionnaire could then build upon the next construct of cultural knowledge by asking what the volunteer knows about the community. That could then lead into the topics the volunteer center can focus on for the volunteers’ training before they work in the field. During this training there can be a brief on the culture of the community, such as, what the community was like before the disaster, what is like now, including stages of grief the disaster survivors may be experiencing and other information pertinent to the local community…

As mentioned in the recommendations, using Campinha-Bacote’s (2002) model of culture competence may be best applied in the future at the volunteer reception centers where coordinators of the volunteers could provide training before the volunteers go into the field to work. This training could involve an intake assessment, as well, to assess the volunteer motivation to gauge their culture awareness by looking inward at their own self-awareness as to what motivates them to volunteer. The training could then provide information about the local community norms and provide cultural knowledge to the volunteers so that they can know who they are serving, and thus improve service and cultural integration of the volunteers within the community…

(end excerpt)

Myths about sex trafficking abound in the USA

Leave a reply

A law enforcement action in Michigan earlier this year lead to a series of misleading TV news articles about it, and posts like this on online groups across the USA, including one for a group where I live in Oregon:

Nearly half of Michigan’s missing children were being trafficked, and we don’t know about the other half.

Don’t you dare tell me that I’m overreacting when someone is acting strangely around my kids!

That social media post is by a woman who believes, mistakenly, that young people, mostly white girls, who are trafficked for sex are kidnapped by strangers. She’s part of a much larger group of people in the USA who mistakenly believe that there are bands of men, usually foreigners, roaming around looking for girls – white girls specifically – to abduct and force into sex trafficking. Movies like 2008’s Taken add fuel to this far-fetched legend. So do things like this: a doctored image posted to a very popular Facebook group that targeted an Oregon small town specifically, with a claim by a woman that she had been accosted by strangers who wanted to buy her baby (a white baby). In this case, thankfully, the community quickly rallied to debunk the rumor, but it’s another example of how people promote the myth of strangers abducting children – primarily white children – to force them into sexual slavery.

The reality is that a trafficker of teens for sex can be the older brother or father of one of your children’s friends. It can be a guy who frequents places where young people gather, like a shopping center. It’s someone who entrances the teens there with gifts and romantic talk. Too often, parents’ response to the idea of sex traffickers is “Beware of strangers!” But traffickers aren’t strangers to the teens they target: they are charming, funny, fun and they know how to make teens feel all the things they long to feel – especially about feeling like an adult.

Traffickers befriend vulnerable young people who have low self-esteem or want to feel beautiful/handsome, loved, included or more grown up. And they do this befriending in places parents have approved for the teen to be: school, an after-school job, the mall, a community of faith, a friend’s house – and, yes, sometimes, online. These predators look for someone who is angry with their parents or not doing well in school or who has run away or who is just feeling really, alone and unwanted, and they offer sympathy. They look for young people who feel ugly and rejected – maybe a boyfriend has dumped the young person, or the young person has never had a romantic relationship and feels like they never will. Young people with disabilities are targets because they want to feel like “normal” teens. Traffickers are happy to shower any of these vulnerable young people in gifts and attention and a feeling of being heard and included. Traffickers draw their victims into trusting relationships and, through a mix of flattery and gifts and abuse, are able to reach a point of complete control over the person, and they are eventually able to use their victims in any way they wish – and the young person often feels like he or she is consenting to what eventually happens, in terms of sex and abuse.

A June 2017 article in Psychology Today noted that a Polaris Project report found that

32 percent of sex trafficking victims were recruited through a friend. Hotspots for recruitment are homeless shelters, rehab facilities, jails, malls, and foster homes. In fact, abductions accounted for only a tiny percentage of victims’ stories. Most victims are not kidnapped, drugged, chained or locked up in a home or workplace. Sometimes they don’t even experience physical abuse because the traffickers don’t want to leave physical evidence that may reveal the abuse. Instead, they use psychological abuse, threats, and manipulation. Some victims even have cell phones and can get permission to leave to go outside to places like a health clinic, a grocery store, or even church.

A survivor of the sex trafficking trade in Portland, Oregon shared some of her experiences with Think Out Loud, a radio program produced by OPB. The Lloyd Center is a mall in downtown Portland:

I was actually recruited out of Lloyd Center. There’s a lot of different recruiting areas in Portland, Lloyd Center being a huge one…If a 16-year-old runs away from home and she takes the bus out to 82nd, within 72 hours she will be picked up by a pimp. The scary thing about pimps is they are masterminds.

In an interview by Audrey Meschter with Multnomah County, Oregon Sheriff Deputy Keith Bickford, Bickford said:

Something that really stuck in my head is how effective these guys are when it comes to brainwashing these girls… Turning them on their own families, their friends, away from their normal life and talking them into getting raped every day by guys that want to pay for sex — and it’s hard to even talk about that — the logical part of your mind is going ‘no way, how do you do that?’, but to the traffickers that’s a very effective way to make money and keep the girls around longer.

Interviews with girls in the USA that have been trafficked are heart-breaking: the girls – and in many cases, young men – are convinced their family no longer wants them. Maybe their family has, indeed, thrown them out. They hate their life, but don’t consider going home an option. The feeling of worthlessness makes them feel that this life of trafficking is their only option.

And consider these statistics from 12 Confronting Child Sexual Abuse Statistics All Parents Need to Know, published in the Huffington Post:

I bring all of this up because I want to protect children and teens from predators, and I know the way to do that is to talk about reality, in frank terms. I started learning about child sex trafficking when I began researching online safety for children in association with the Virtual Volunteering Project back in the 1990s, and I was floored: I had always thought most child abductions were by strangers, and to learn that the VAST majority are by non-custodial parents was startling. And finding out that most teens who are trafficked are targeted by people they consider friends, even romantic partners, was equally stunning.

I also bring this up because I live in the PDX metro area, and Portland, Oregon is often cited as the city with the highest rate of juvenile sex trafficking in the USA.

Protecting a teen in the USA from trafficking is about parents and other family members having a trusting relationship with their children, where there is lots of shared time together and lots of actions that say to that teen, “I enjoy being with you and I respect who you are and you are important to me.” If a teen feels like a parent or other trusted adults are interested in them and want them to be in their lives, those young people aren’t going to be open to overtures from a predator. It’s also about getting vulnerable teens – teens with disabilities, teens who exhibit depression, teens with addiction issues, teens who are struggling with mental issues, teens struggling with tragedies, teens who are struggling with their sexuality, etc. – the help they need.

Also see:

Sex Trafficking of Children Myths and Facts from Multnomah County, Oregon.

Human Trafficking: The Myths and the Realities, from The Muse.

September 16, 2020 update: Here we are, two years later, and this problem has gotten even WORSE. The QAnon movement is promoting outrageous myths about a supposed underground pedophilia ring run by celebrities and left-leaning government officialsy, appropriating and sensationalizing the issue of child sex trafficking to recruit more followers into its conspiratorial web, and legitimate anti-trafficking organizations are suffering significant collateral damage. Legitimate anti-trafficking programs now have to spend an inordinate amount of time debunking viral misinformation, mining through unhinged tips and warding off mob harassment, detracting from their ability to actually help kids in need.

June 26, 2021 update: In the Washington Post article “The state of Ohio vs. a sex-trafficked teenager,” you are taken step-by-step into how some girls are enticed into what they think is a relationship but is actually sex trafficking. It’s a long read, but worth it.

April 25, 2023 update: This Washington Post article profiles when 19-year-old Tiffany Simpson wrote an anti-sex-trafficking group in 2012. She’d thought that trafficking was something that only happened to girls from foreign countries. But the newspaper article she’d read described American teenagers. They weren’t kidnapped or tied up. They thought, at first, that they were in love. Even when the threats and the violence started, they stayed. Tiffany thought about the scar on her left thigh — a reminder of what happened when she, too, stayed… Tiffany lived in Georgia, where she’d spent her whole life. Where, at 17, she met a 34-year-old man who promised to take care of her. Where she became pregnant with his baby. Where she was driven to trailer parks to have sex with as many buyers as would pay.

April 29, 2023 update: California woman is found guilty of lying to police that a couple tried to kidnap her children.

Related resources:

Examples of Folklore, Rumors (or Rumours), Urban Myths & Organized Misinformation Campaigns Interfering with Development & Aid/Relief Efforts & Elections (note there are several examples of mobs who have murdered strangers visiting their towns under the mistaken belief that such were there to abduct children for organ harvesting)

You have an obligation to be truthful online

Safety in virtual volunteering

Keeping volunteers safe – & keeping everyone safe with volunteers

Why don’t they tell? Would they at your org?

Safety of volunteers contributes to a shelter closing

volunteer managers: you are NOT psychic!

More Than Me scandal in Liberia: a lesson to all who “just want to help”

Leave a reply

Katie Meyler of the USA wanted to save girls in Liberia from sexual exploitation, to educate them, empower them, keep them safe. She founded a charity called More Than Me and quickly raised more than $8 million for her efforts. The first More Than Me project multiplied quickly to 19 schools teaching 4,000 students. When the Liberian president, who had won a Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for women’s safety, was asked what she wanted from those keen to help her country, she answered, “To expand Katie Meyler’s initiative to as many communities as possible.” Meyler rubbed shoulders with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, and even get invited to the Obama White House.

Yet many of the girls in the program were regularly raped by a high-level MTM staff member, who was never vetted and rarely supervised in his interactions with girls. Victims told authorities and the media that he threatened to take away their scholarships or even kill them if they reported him.

The first school launched byMore Than Me was staffed in large part by year-long American “teaching fellows,” volunteers who were each asked to fundraise or pay $10,000 to participate. Except for one position, teaching experience wasn’t required, nor was a criminal background check – applicants just had to show they were an “innovative, out-of-the-box thinker and risk-taker” and include a video demonstrating they were “on fire with passion.” And, of course, have the money to pay. One of the first volunteers tried to sound the alarm and mismanagement and lack of appropriate safety systems at the organization, drafting a document highlighting the risks the organization was taking regarding financial management and children’s safety. The organization did create a written policy which said staff members were required to report child abuse to the organization, but in a country where sex for grades and other school-based exploitation were prevalent, the charity had no procedures for how to do so, and did not train staff about what reporting would look like.

Instead of helping girls, this program has irreparably harmed many. It put girls into the path of a serial predator and ignored warning signs about such. And many thousands of dollars are unaccounted for.

If you want to go abroad, with no experience, just a good heart, to help others, and you don’t yet know about the horror show that is More Than Me in Liberia, you need to read up. The ProPublica piece that exposed More Than Me is worth your time.

As this article from the Nonprofit Quarterly notes about the More Than Me scandal:

Cases like More Than Me’s underline the importance of context and relevant experience. Anyone with the most basic understanding of the social dynamics in Liberia or any other post-conflict situation would have known that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) was a huge problem and not taken it for granted. The inexperience of Katie Meyler has been remarked upon and shows clearly through her handling of this crisis. White saviorism also thrives on the porn of poverty that freezes affected countries into essentialized images and relations of dependence from which they struggle to recover. But equally dangerous is its instrumentality as a facade for the less than honorable activities of some so-called humanitarians. There can be no sustainable reform of humanitarianism unless the world puts heads together to block the unintended consequences of humanitarianism.

Why am I so hard on people that post to forums or write me directly and say, “I have a good heart and a love of adventure and want to help poor kids in other countries!”? Why am I even harder on organizations that say, “Pay us this amount of money and we’ll let you help in our orphanage abroad – no need for any special skills or a criminal background check!”? This is a perfect example as to why. Yes, I am abrupt and demanding with people that posts such messages to fora or directly to me – and I will continue to do so.

And it’s not just abroad: I frequently come into contact with programs right here in Oregon that do not have any written policies about preventing and reporting inappropriate behavior by staff, volunteers or clients, and have no training for staff, volunteers or clients on what inappropriate behavior is and what reporting looks like. And when I try to bring this up, however gently, prefaced by lots of compliments to the program for producing such great results, I hear “We haven’t had any problems with inappropriate behavior.” And my response is always the same, “How do you know?”

Four things I wish every person knew who wants to go abroad and help, and every organization knew that wants to fund efforts to help people abroad:

  • Having a good heart and passion for a cause will not make your organization immune to corruption, mismanagement, harassment of clients or sexual abuse.
  • Any nonprofit, charity or government effort to help people should always put the clients, their priorities and their safety FIRST, below whatever organizational, program or personal brand you are trying to establish.
  • Local people that you want to help, even children, get a say in how you are going to help them, a say in what the organizational and funding priorities should be, and a priority for when they complain about something that threatens themselves, their family or their community.
  • Your goal, as much as possible, is to build the capacity of those local people to eventually lead and staff these activities themselves WITHOUT YOU.

The backlash against humanitarians working abroad with children, including volunteers (voluntourism), is coming. Are you ready? Also see: Nepal’s children at risk: Sexual abuse in the aid sector.

Also see:

Sexual harassment of humanitarian workers

Leave a reply

I’m on a Facebook group for humanitarian workers that work in countries other than their own. It’s an invitation-only group, so I’m not going to say the name.

Over the last few weeks, women have posted about experiencing sexual harassment from co-workers and, in one case, a representative of a donor agency, and some have asked how to deal with it.

After sharing some information about her latest experience, one woman asked for specific advice:

What implication will it have to report, how will my colleagues see me after I report, my reputation is in-line, what implication will it bring to my career in this field.

The reality is that NO ONE can answer her questions, because there is no way to know unless someone else has reported before at that specific organization, with exactly the same staff, and can share what happened in their case. Every organization is different. No matter what their policies regarding sexual harassment, it is possible her colleagues will support her and it is possible they won’t. It is possible it will affect her career negatively if she reports and it is possible it won’t.

Of course, there are responses like this to accounts of sexual harassment:

I’m a man and I’m telling you to stand up for such a$$holes.

I’m not sure why men don’t understand that there are consequences for “standing up”: she could be fired for something seemingly unrelated to the harassment, her job could suddenly be eliminated, she could stop being invited to meetings and stop receiving important internal memos, isolating her to the point of being forced to quit, supervisors could share that she’s a “problem” and she could find herself without references and without a job.

Here are responses from women on the Facebook group about how they handled sexual harassment by co-workers or representatives from partner organizations or donor organizations, or what their own fears have been about reporting such:

My experience is that if you stand for yourself, you are labeled as a prude and not funny and/or the person that is so deeply offended that no future communication seems possible.

The only thing that ever worked for me was to find a male “ally” that would intervene in such a situation. Sad but true.

I had a similar situation (inappropriate comments) inside my own organisation: he was the boss of my boss. I never confronted him directly but I told my boss and my colleagues, and they never left me alone with him again.

Sometimes, responding angrily, in the moment, pisses off predators even more and they retaliate by being even more disgusting or threatening.

The problem here is the impact our decision has on our organizations or our future careers. And while most often men accused/investigated for such things are just free to go, with no consequences, women’s career or their organizations’ future is at stake. And that’s unfair. I should not be forced to chose between my dignity, my beneficiaries/colleagues and justice. I should not have to risk more than him. But it is true. And tbh, if you ask me if I chose to speak up and risk that my organization will not be able to support people in need and my colleagues will lose their jobs or my dignity, I will just shut up and smile, both while feeling extremely helpless and frustrated. Fair? Not. Probable? Very.

This is the reality of so many professional women, not just those working in humanitarian assignments abroad: it’s the reality for journalists, for professors, for doctors, for nurses, for women working in manufacturing or food service or retail.

When I was in this position myself – being harassed by a male co-worker – I reported it to the UN HR field office where I worked – and was told by the UN HR representative, “Working in the field is really difficult, and if you aren’t up for these challenges, perhaps you should leave when your contract ends, if not before.” I was stunned. I wasn’t ready to give up the job – and I felt like I would also be giving up my entire career. So, instead, I went to the local staff HR counterpart, someone who was from the country where I was working. I told him what was happening, and told him to never, ever put me in the same car with the perpetrator on field visits – to put no women in his car at all. We had a long, honest talk about it and he had my back – he made sure this guy never got opportunities to be alone with any female staff in cars. I talked to all other women in the office and we agreed to watch out for each other, to never leave anyone alone with this person. I will always be angry that that UN HR person wouldn’t support me – but I also know my career would have been completely derailed if I had officially reported the incident, and I wasn’t ready to lose my career.

This is my advice for a woman experiencing sexual harassment on the job in humanitarian work, and I hope it’s helpful to other women in other professions as well. It’s what I wish I had done:

Remember that your safety and health are most important and you need to do what is best for you.

Email the details of exactly what happened – exactly what was said, where and when – regarding the instances of sexual harassment to a trusted colleague. That doesn’t have to be a colleague at the same organization, but it does need to be someone you trust NOT to forward the email unless and if you ask them to, and will keep the email indefinitely. This will give you a written record of what happened and proof that you told someone close the actual date of what happened. In your account, focus on what was said and done. Don’t just say, “He said sexual things that made me uncomfortable” but, rather, EXACTLY what the person said. Don’t say “He touched me sexually” but, rather, “He put his hand on…” Keep a copy of this email or emails on a computer of your own as well. If you choose not to report now, but to do so later, this email/these emails will be crucial.

Think about ways to keep yourself safe while you are waiting to decide whether or not to report. For instance, do not meet alone with the perpetrator: always take someone with you. Refuse to be in a car alone with the person. If the person comes to your office, insist that the door stay open. If you think it would be helpful, tell trusted co-workers to help you in never meeting along with the person, never being next to the person in a car, etc. Don’t be surprised if, in talking with other women, you find that they have similar stories of being harassed.

I suggest you go to the person that you are supposed to report to at your organization regarding sexual harassment. This is probably someone in human resources. You may want to ask a trusted co-worker to go with you and sit quietly while you speak, to be a witness to what happens. At this meeting, tell exactly what happened, without saying the name of the perpetrator’s name but with as many details as possible. Say that you are not going to say the name of the person at this point, and say why:

I am worried about giving you further information because I worry about my career and how I will be treated if I fully disclose. I would like to know what exactly will happen when I give you the name of this person. How will you investigate? How will this be documented? What other staff members and office will know about the investigation? I am not asking if the person will be fired or reprimanded – I am asking only for how these kinds of cases proceed by office policy, so I can know whether or not I should give further details. 

If you feel comfortable proceeding based on the answers you get, proceed with full reporting and give the perpetrator’s name. If you don’t feel comfortable, say, “I don’t feel comfortable saying more because I’m not getting clear answers” or “I am going to take 24 hours to consider your answers.” No matter what happens at the meeting, you need to write an email of followup with the person you met with, copying the person who was there as a witness, saying, “Thank you for meeting with me on such-and-such date. In our meeting, we agreed that…” and then recount exactly what was said in that meeting, exactly what the answers were to the questions you asked, so that the person cannot later try to say that he or she did or didn’t say something.

Also, rehearse comments to make if the harassment happens again. You want to be able to say these clearly, with a somewhat raised voice so that anyone nearby can hear you, and rehearsing these statements can help you later, in the moment:

“What did you just say to me? Please repeat what you just said to me.”

“I don’t think this is an appropriate comment/conversation and I don’t want to hear it again.”

“That comment makes me uncomfortable and you are not to talk to me that way again.”

Then leave the space immediately, if possible. If you are next to the person in a room, move. If the person walks into a room with you and closes the door, walk over and open it, with no explanation, until someone else enters the room. If you are in a car and the security situation allows it, ask the driver to stop the car, insist if necessary, then exchange seats with a man in the vehicle: “I am going to have to exchange seats with you immediately. Thank you.”

And continue to document any inappropriate behavior or references to such.

Also see:

My wakeup call regarding risks in volunteering programs

Leave a reply

When I first started promoting the work of the Virtual Volunteering Project back in 1997, the question asked most frequently was, “How do you keep people safe from online volunteers who might be predators?”

I took those safety concerns to heart and, for months, poured over information from the FBI and from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children at the time. I learned all I could about who harms other people, particularly children, and what situations put children at most harm. And I was stunned at what I learned: the vast majority of missing children who have been taken by someone were taken by a non-custodial parent, not a stranger. And that the vast majority of people that harm children are family members or someone known and trusted by the family.

I also researched identify theft – and was stunned to discover how often this theft is perpetrated by family members or someone else living in the house where the victim lives: using the victim’s credit card, opening credit accounts, open new bank accounts, getting loans, withdrawing funds from the victim’s bank account, using the victim’s health and/or dental insurance for their own use, claiming the victim’s government benefits as their own and filing false tax returns or claiming the victim’s tax refunds.

I revisit these subjects regularly, and in more than 20 years, the facts haven’t changed about where the dangers regarding abuse and identity theft come from. When I reference these facts regarding safety in a training, it sometimes draws gasps from the audience. I remind workshop attendees that Larry Nassar was well known to his victims, their parents and coaches and trusted by many. So was Jerry Sandusky. So are many of the clergymen facing charges related to child sexual abuse. And I ask: what policies do YOU have that would prevent this at your organization, by a volunteer, client or staff member you know and trust but aren’t observing every second during his or her service? Does your organization have a speak up culture or a culture of avoidance?

I also remind them that Big Brothers / Big Sisters brings adults and children together and that these adults and children interact far from the eyes of any staff members or family – and the organization has a stellar safety record. How does BBBS do such an incredible job regarding safety? Safety is embedded in every part of their organizational culture. They don’t just do a criminal background check: they interview candidates for volunteering, they observe them, they reference check them, they train them, they have intensive and repeated interactions with them, and they train client families about safety as well. Participants are continually reminded of safety guidelines and warning signs. They also have strict guidelines about situations mentors and children are, and are not, allowed to be in, like any situation where there would be a changing of clothes in front of each other or others, such as in a gym locker room – and participants are continually reminded of these guidelines.

None of this is to say that protecting volunteers and clients from strangers isn’t important, or that doing activities online doesn’t incur risks. But it’s a sobering reality that people, including children, are harmed by people they know and trust far more than strangers. If your risk management for volunteers or clients focuses only on strangers, you are cultivating an environment where very bad things can happen.

And for the record: I’ve been studying virtual volunteering since 1996, and still have no account of an online volunteer causing harm to an organization. If it hasn’t happened, it WILL happen, because there is no way to interact with humans, online or face-to-face, and absolutely prevent, 100%, that anything bad will happen as a results.

For more information:

This excellent article by David Finkelhor, the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire

The myth of stranger danger by Heather Ryan

The Center for Identity Management and Information Protection, housed at Utica College.

August 2019 update:

In an article in Ms Magazine, Amanda Ruzicka of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said:

Research has shown that adolescents commit up to half of all child sexual abuse incidents against younger children, and that the onset of this behavior peaks at age 14.

Let that fact sink in. And consider how many nonprofits bring adolescents together with younger children, as clients or as volunteers, and don’t have this fact in mind. It does not ALL mean that these nonprofits shouldn’t bring adolescents together with younger children but, rather, that appropriate precautions need to be taken regarding adolescents being along together, let alone with children. And it’s another example of how we focus so much on stranger danger – but not on the much more common risk. And please note that the Moore Center has an excellent program to help address this risk, summarized below from the same article the same article in Ms Magazine:

We also know that most times adolescents engage in harmful sexual behaviors with younger children because of factors like the absence of adult supervision, or a lack of knowledge about appropriate sexual behaviors and how their actions can impact themselves and others—not because they are bad kids. Our Responsible Behavior with Younger Children (RBYC) program aims to provide sixth and seventh grade students with the knowledge, tools and skills they need to model healthy behaviors with younger children and their peers. RBYC focuses on what behaviors are harmful and constitute sexual harassment or child sexual abuse, the consequences of those behaviors, as well as why these behaviors are harmful and how to prevent them. Students learn about real-life scenarios when harmful sexual behaviors could take place, how to take the perspective of a younger child and how respond in a healthy and empathetic way. Other sessions highlight the developmental differences between adolescents and younger children, healthy behaviors with younger children and peers and how to be a good bystander or upstander… we focus on preventing child sexual abuse in a manner that takes the responsibility off of children to protect themselves, and instead focuses on preventing perpetration.

And remember that the Boy Scouts of America kept a file of more than 7,800 Boy Scout members that had committed sexual crimes against boys in their program – none of those predators were unknown to their victims and were often well known to the parents of their victims – no strangers. The growing number of lawsuits allege that Boy Scouts staff and volunteers were aware that the structure of the institution was a convenient landing spot for child predators and did nothing to rework the organization or protect its charges.

Also see: