EIL Intercultural Learning

With over 2,000 people traveling on EIL programmes across 24 countries every year the safety and welfare of our participants is always top of my mind. Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop run by Chris Gould from Child Safe and formerly head of the Child Protection Group in the Avon and Somerset Police in the UK. Chris Gould is regarded as one of the leading authorities in the field of safety in international youth exchanges in the world. I first met Chris at the World Youth and Student Travel Conference (WYSTC) in 1998 and since then have worked with him on projects here in Ireland and in the UK and in Italy.

Chris' workshops are always stimulating and challenging and yesterday was no exception! There was some very interesting discussion about the selection and recruitment of staff, volunteers and host families and on the need to fully brief young people on what to do if they encounter a problem - no matter how big or small it is. My colleague Amy McMullan, who also attended the workshop told me that the "the inclusion of the child protection risk as part of the general risk assessment process involved in a travel programme" stood out for her as being a highlight of the workshop. Too often people react after an event rather than having a strategy in place to try and avoid such events in the first place according to Amy. And I think she is right. In EIL we invest a lot of time and energy in doing everything we can to make our programmes as safe as possible. And given the nature of what we do and the length of time people spend on our programmes it is only right that we do so. Of course we can not prepare for every eventuality and accidents sometimes happen, but we never stop striving to improve our systems and procedures. All of our programme staff in Ireland have taken part in Child Protection Training, Amy McMullan is a HSE accredited Child Protection Trainer, we started Garda Vetting host families in Ireland over a year ago and we only send participants to countries where we have a sister organisation on the ground who are aware of local conditions and in a position to react quickly if there are any problems.

So yesterday's workshop was just part of our ongoing commitment to the safety and welfare of our participants. As far back as 2003 EIL hosted a conference which brought together organisations involved in youth travel from the UK, Germany, Greece, France, Sweden and Ireland which produced "Guidelines for Good Practice - Child Safety and Youth Exchange Programmes". This conference was funded by The Youth Programme of The European Union and was also made possible through the involvement of Leargas, The National Youth Council of Ireland and The Youth Council for Northern Ireland. Since then these guidelines have been translated in to all the languages of the European Union and are still widely regarded as the most comprehensive guidelines available in the the youth exchange field.