Physical safety of participants
Physical safety and wellbeing of participants involved in the youth exchange events is necessary for the succesfull implementation of these activities. Youth organizations and their staff have a responsibility to implement necessary steps, measures and protocols aimed at minimizing the risks for participants.
In this chapter we will guide you through the simple checklist designed to ensure physical safety of participants of international activities.
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- When selecting a venue of your activity take in concideration the folowing factors:
- quality of accomodation (Hygienic conditions, availability of food for people with special dietary needs , number of beds per room, size and equpiment of the working room, quality of internet coverage),
- availability of emergency services (Police, firefighters, paramedics),
- safety records of the venue place (Find out if there is a significant presence of violent crime/hate crime),
- estimate how easy is it for participants to reach the venue using the most economic ways of transport, such as buses or trains.
- When selecting participants arange the recruitment process in a way that will eliminate all potential participants with extremist ideologies.
- Ask participants to share important health information that may affect their participation at the activity with you. It is very important that you as an organizer are aware if your participants have any serios chronic illness, allergy or any other special need. The health data provided to you by participants have to be kept in strict confidence and only be shared with health workers or other people tasked with making sure that participant is safe.
- Once participants are selected send them detailed information about the agenda of the training, accomodation, travel arrangements, rules of conduct and other necessary information.
- Always demand that participants younger than 18 have a written permission from their parents/guardians for attending the event.
- When selecting a venue of your activity take in concideration the folowing factors:
- Make sure that all participants are introduced to the rules of conduct as soon as the exchange activity starts and inform them about the consequences of breaking them.
- Share the contact of emergency services with participants. Also, at least one person from the organizing team should provide their contact details to the exchange participants to be used in case of emergency.
- If some of your participants have severe food allergies make sure that the food served to them in the accomodation is safe for their consumption.
- Ask the participants to behave responsibly during the free time, especially when it comes to alcohol and drugs use.
- Give advice to participants not to carry large sums of money on themselves and tell them which parts of the city should be avoided at night.
- Once the participants depart from the activity, make sure that all of them have safely arrived back home.
- Conduct the evaluation on whether the safety protocols implemented by your organization will have to be updated or changed based on the experiences from the just finalised activity.