Tim Abbott

Youth work and social media: boundaries

Jon Jolly has posted here about the issue of how we set boundaries in our online interactions with young people, citing a forum discussion he kicked off at UK Youth Online.

Here are a few thoughts from our experience, which may have turned into a bit of a ramble, but here goes anyway.

Within CYO our approach is to attempt to replicate the boundaries that we set by, for example, not giving our personal mobile numbers. In practice this means using work email addresses rather than personal ones. When it comes to social networking we do not admit young people (under 18's) that we work with as friends on e.g. FaceBook. Although it hasn't come to it yet, if we felt the need to set up a social networking space, we'd do it in our professional rather than personal capacity. A social networking space in a youth work context will naturally appeal to the same good practice guidelines about how much you share with young people to preserve professional boundaries. So, what photos you post (if any?), what you say in messaging, how much info you add to your profile, how often you update it or are available for IM chat. The guidelines we follow in other aspects of professional youth work practice convert fairly easily to this kind of Social Networking as long as it represents our professional persona.

Most IM clients allow you to save the message log and if you're using instant messaging with young people I would suggest it's good practice to save conversations; just as one would log phone calls, make a record of texts sent / received and save emails.

Collective, the girl band that work in partnership with us, have set up a MySpace page to allow a level of social networking with young people they meet. In their case it's a bit easier and less 'personal' in that they always present themselves as a band and never as individuals, so when replying to young people's emails they sign off as 'Collective' rather than as the person writing the email. If you're the only or main youth worker then obviously this isn't an option - you've got to sign off as yourself!

As above, none of us, including the members of Collective, accept friend requests from young people. However, it's a feature of the internet that if they want to, anyone can find you. We had a very persistent young person who managed to follow a long and ingenious trail to find out personal details about one of Collective.  I would therefore advise anyone, whether working with young people or not, to be circumspect about what they post and where, youth workers especially.

We need to exercise care in what we post - this obviously includes things like blogs and Flickr accounts. There's a whole load of photos I haven't posted to my Flickr account, some for artistic reasons (!) and some because they include people and I want to retain absolute control over how / if I use them, who sees them and in which context. You don't have to post everything; know yourself and be aware of your motives, just as you would be in your work with young people. And be very careful about what gets uploaded to YouTube!

I blog with clear reference to my employer, CYO, and use my work email address, so although it's my personal blog I need to post with regard to the way what I say will reflect on CYO. Anyone can read it, including my Trustees and young people so I seek to post in a way that would not cause problems if one of the young people we work with came by for a look. This means no names of young people and often insufficient identifying information (e.g. name of school) to ensure that if you didn't know the situation already you wouldn't be able to derive missing information.

Any major flaws, or advice you'd add? You're welcome to comment here, but you could also pop over to Jon's blog or the UK Youth Online forum.

IJM

Yesterday I met with a good friend, Terry, who is Executive Director of International Justice Mission (UK). IJM is a growing human rights organisation that investigates and provides legal help for victims of injustice in many parts of the world. In many places, poverty excludes people from the justice systems that are available - IJM deals with cases of slavery, abuse, land grabbing, exploitation and state injustice against its citizens.

I'm glad to have been able to put him in touch with a few people locally who have skills or experience to offer.

I've worked with Terry before on some projects he was overseeing with Churches Together in Britain and Ireland as a 'mission accompanier'. These kinds of friendships are so helpful - I admit I'd probably be at a loss to know what to do if we swapped jobs (and I'm not sure how keen Terry would be to take on schools work in Colchester!)

Our shared observation is that issues of justice, particularly on a global scale, are a major concern to young people and the rising generation of twenty-somethings who are filling our churches and are increasingly active in stirring up awareness and doing what they can to bring about change.

 

Do your people have a stake in the outcome?

A pearl of wisdom from Phil Cooke:

The people who complain the most, are the people who have no stake in the outcome.

True in so many areas, including youth work.
See the rest of his post here.

Synchroblog: Church and Money - What if we had nothing

As an inter-church organisation we depend on gifts from individuals and churches to keep going, a bit like most missions organisations, whether at home or overseas.

We're so grateful to all those who give, one way or another, to enable us to continue to take the good news to young people in schools and elsewhere. But it becomes too easy to slip into thinking that if we only had "... this much more giving" we could do "... so much more." This may indeed be the way of God for us, new supporters that enable us to employ more youth and schools workers and undertake new projects to reach more young people, so we are unlikely to stop inviting people to give to sustain and grow this ministry.

But here are a couple of challenges that I never want to lose sight of;

What if our income has reached a practical maximum? Is our vision limited by what we can afford to do, or is it big enough, creative enough and trusting God enough to go beyond what finance can achieve and into what people, energised by God, can achieve.

And what if we had nothing. Would the vision within us still burn so brightly that we would find a way, somehow, to continue to do the work we do. Herein lies the ultimate challenge to stay close to the vision that guides us and the God who leads us. And it has nothing to do with money.

Check out other fine SynchroBlogs on the subject of Church and Money here:

The Check That Controls at Igneous Quill
Pushing The Camel:  Why there might be more rich people in Heaven than in your local Church at Fernando's desk
Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes
Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz at Hello Said Jenelle
Zaque at Johnny Beloved
Walking with the Camels at Calacirian
Greed and Bitterness:  Why Nobody's Got it Right About Money and The Church at Phil Wyman's Square No More
Kirk Bartha at Theocity
Money and the Church: A Fulltime Story at The Pursuit
But I Gave at Church at The Assembling of the Church
Moving Out of Jesus Neighborhood at Be the Revolution
Money and the Church: why the big fuss? at Mike's Musings
Coffee Hour Morality at One Hand Clapping
Bling Bling in the Holy of Holies at In Reba's World
Magazinial Outreach at Decompressing Faith
Money's too tight to mention at Out of the Cocoon
Bullshit at The Agent B Files
The Bourgeois Elephant in the Missional/Emergent Living Room at Headspace
When the Church Gives at Payneful Memories
Who, or What, Do You Worship at Charis Shalom
Greed at Hollow Again
Silver and Gold Have We - Oops! at Subversive Influence
The Church and Money at Khanya

Sacred Ideas may be killing your organisation

Phil Cooke has a useful summary of the idea that organisations should check to make sure they're not just doing things because they've always done them. He gives a few examples of sacred ideas that can remain unchallenged, for example: If we re-brand our non-profit or religious organization to reach younger audiences, the older supporters won’t like it and will stop giving.
You can guess my thoughts on this one!