Creating Safe And Nurturing Spaces In Organizations
Within my capacity of leading youth organizations as well as training boards and executive teams of nonprofit organizations, it is clear that organizations and leaders need to play a significant role in creating safe and nurturing spaces, as well as protecting the mental, emotional and physical safety of youth.
Predators come in many shapes, sizes and forms and must be vilified and stopped! Protecting our Youth from them is a collective responsibility that’s a million times more important than the reputation of a predator or an organization. Leaders that are reluctant and fear organizational repercussions of taking action when evidence has been thoroughly examined need to live up to their responsibility courageously or step away. Inaction in such cases should never be tolerated.
Here are my quick thoughts on some of the actionable preventative measures that we recommend in our trainings:
Screen: Regardless of pressure to expedite the recruiting process in many nonprofits, carefully screen potential candidates prior to hiring them as paid staff and/or volunteers who work directly with youth.
Compliance: Abide by the latest laws and regulations to protect their safety and wellbeing.
Policies: Set and communicate clear policies about appropriate and inappropriate interactions, guidelines, and boundaries to staff and youth alike. Ensure that staff clearly understand the consequences of violating laws and regulations as well as organizational policies, and have them sign agreements if need be. In addition, ensure that youth clearly identify healthy interactions as well as appropriate reporting mechanisms and actions that they and their caregivers can take if their rights are violated.
Training: Regardless of limited resources for many nonprofits, provide ongoing training as well as educational materials on creating safe and healthy environments and relationships to both staff and youth. One completely overlooked training subject to protect our youth is to develop their emotional intelligence skills so they’re less likely to be abused, manipulated, or groomed, especially when they are vulnerable due one circumstance or another.
Practices: Provide checks and balances in the design and implementation of youth programs and visible youth spaces, limit potentially problematic interactions and communications, supervise and monitor relationships closely to minimize potential exploitations, and survey the pulse formally and informally, anonymously and otherwise.
Some of the actionable interventions include:
Act:
Beware of overreacting or under reacting and take every allegation seriously. Suspend the program and alleged offender immediately after report of abuse! Comply and partner with youth government agencies as well as law enforcement authorities to investigate and take the responsible, even if difficult, actions necessary to mitigate and hold predators accountable. If verified and substantiated, leaders have to go beyond just termination, and that’s what we signed up for when we took the leadership roles. We signed up to serve and protect the youth and the community regardless of the discomfort or difficulty of the decisions.
Communicate:
Beware of over communicating or under communicating, and ensure the right stakeholders are on the same page and up to date with the most accurate and transparent information.
Resources:
Provide or at least facilitate the referral to mental health counseling, legal and financial assistance to reduce deterrents of proceeding with full action, and other needed support to assist the victims of abuse with recovery.
Culture:
learn from the incident and improve the selection process, programs, policies, and practices in order to minimize recurrence and make that the DNA of the organization.
Share:
It is our duty to help other youth organizations and communities by sharing with them references as well as best practices so that predators who slip through the cracks don’t find new grounds and opportunities to prey on.
May we live up to our responsibilities of protecting, developing and supporting the youth by any means necessary.
Best regards,
Dr. Mohammed Almathil