Safety is Premier in International Summer Community Service Programs For Teens

A central consideration when choosing teen travel camps or high school community service programs is the organization’s health and safety record, the precautions it takes and protocols that are in place. Be sure to ask what the teen volunteer summer program does to ensure health and safety.

VISIONS Service Adventures holds a superlative safety record. We place primary emphasis on, with over two decades’ experience preserved and recorded and with ongoing research and risk reviews, VISIONS places primary emphasis on health and safety.

Developing a new program site.

Families sometimes ask how or why VISIONS chooses program locations.  Program locations exist because full-time personnel or valued long-time program directors have a strong connection, passion for or interest in a place. So, we start with personal connection. We spend minimum 12 months developing any new program, traveling to the place several times, meeting personally with community organizations, local leaders, government officials, and NGO’s. We describe VISIONS in detail and talk candidly with people about hosting us. We carefully consider the quality and scope of proposed projects, the likelihood of meaningful community relationships and/or foreign language immersion, and splendid exploration opportunities.

Utmost in a teen summer community service program, especially in culture immersion settings, is both real and perceived safety—proximity to clinics, physicians, hospitals and the quality of emergency care; the availability of provisions; the political climate, social and transportation infrastructures. We do not go where we feel unwelcome or unsafe, and not until after having taken close stock of the community.Furthermore, VISIONS discontinues travel to a location if our perception of safety declines.

Staying informed.

VISIONS maintains year-round contact with local partners and friends. If a program location makes it into the news, and if we have questions or concerns, we contact local friends for first-hand assessments of the situation. We keep in touch, continuously monitoring unusual events, until assured of safety and a return to relative normalcy.

Site preparation.

As all VISIONS leaders learn the first day of staff straining, their premiere responsibility is “Safety! Safety! Safety!” After eight days of intensive training in the U.S., VISIONS directors and staff fly to program sites, arriving eight to ten days before participants. They carefully prepare the summer home base. They thoroughly clean, replace or install lights, fix broken locks, sometimes adding more. They clear debris, clean and check tools and gear; re-visit medical facilities, and they practice safety protocols locally where accidents may happen, e.g., how to carry out an injured pperson from a remote trail site.

Precautions.

VISIONS alerts local authorities of our presence in all locations. In foreign countries VISIONS registers with the US Embassy.On arrival day, leaders collect participants’ passports, credit cards, ID’s which are locked up securely under staff supervision. We “bank” the bulk of participants’ cash until they need it. A leader with advanced safety certifications usually is the First Aid / Health Honcho; he or she has reviewed every medical form, keeps and distributes medications in a well proven efficient system.

Each program has a cache of resource manuals that clearly outline protocols (which are also published in our Staff Handbook) and hold key information about First Aid, Health and Safety, food and water, safety on the work site.

Taken together the above considerations are some of the ways that VISIONS ensures health and well being in its volunteer service programs for high school students.