All three of my children are teachers. My son teaches grade three students. My youngest daughter graduated with her Early Childhood Education. Victoria, as many of you know, is a licensed teacher in Ontario but is applying her education to abuse prevention and protection, as our Director of Training with Plan to Protect®. 

Each month, we receive a few copies of Professionally Speaking: The magazine of Ontario College of Teachers. Each issue has inspiring articles on bullying, classroom management, and modernizing teacher education. We often try to integrate the learnings from the magazine into our training initiatives at Plan to Protect®.

We all know young people use text, web and various social messaging channels to communicate directly and privately with friends, family, staff members and volunteers in trusted organizations they are a part of.

I have young adult children, and I know they do most of their communication via text and social media.  When my children created a profile on Facebook, I joined Facebook. When they signed up for Twitter, I was soon to follow. 

One of the reasons I joined was, if it was important to them and they were talking about it, I also wanted to experience it. With my children now living internationally, I am able to stay in touch with them in real time, able to share pictures and get tidbits of news.  

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality gaming application for use on smartphones. The game, made by Nintendo, is based on its predecessor that came out in 1996—allowing the previous generation of Pokémon trainers to indulge in a sweeping rush of nostalgia.  It is sweeping the world and has exceeded Twitter users.

A father of a 12-year-old announced in our training seminar recently that he found over 400 text messages on his son’s phone from a male that was 30 years older than his son.  He didn’t even know they were friends.  Apparently this was an occasional helper at a youth drop-in center where his son would go after school.  

Relationships are the priority for the children and youth’s ministry at Central Baptist Church in Edmonton.

But for children and youth to build relationships with God, they need to be able to trust the church leading them.

“I want all of our volunteers to be just as convinced as I am that the church should be the safest place on earth and that the church should be a place that children can know that they are safe and that they are cared for,” said Jud Stade, the church’s emerging generations pastor, meaning he’s responsible for overseeing ministries for children to young adults in their mid-20s.

Nostalgia: (noun) a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

If I had a dollar every time someone said, “too bad we can’t go back to the days when we didn’t have to do all this abuse prevention stuff,” I would be a very wealthy person. 

Last night I saw Spotlight.

Today I feel numb! 

Spotlight is a 2015 American drama film directed by Thomas McCarthy and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer.

The story is about The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, a newspaper investigative unit in the United States. The real Spotlight Team earned the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Knowing that the task is too big for one person, and the skills needed to be successful are quite varied, we recommend that a committee be formed to bring oversight to Plan to Protect®.

Some of the skills and gifts needed are:

1. Leadership, including the ability to make difficult and painful decisions when it is not popular.  Also, someone who may be privy to confidential information when approving individuals who will be placed in a position of trust;
2. Administration (there is a lot of paperwork and organization required);
3. Ability to teach adults and youth in an engaging and inspiring manner;
4. Conscientious, to keep to the task and not let the ball drop;
5. Discernment, as you will need to listen to that still small voice (and sometimes your gut) to say no to some people who wish to have access to the vulnerable individuals whom you serve.