The Child Safety Pledge is a funder-driven effort to encourage youth-serving organizations to adopt best practices to prevent and report child sexual abuse.

The organizers want to create a safer, more transparent, and more accountable environment in organizations that work with children.

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Purpose:

Our campaign urges the adoption of a universal and comprehensive pledge by funders of organizations that work with children to require their grantees do everything in their power to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse.

The Child Safety Pledge works by elevating awareness and encouraging organizations to adopt best practices to prevent and report child sexual abuse.

The goal of the Child Safety Pledge is to encourage funders to make grants and give donations only to those youth-serving organizations that have implemented policies and procedures that address child sexual abuse – policies which apply to and are understood by all personnel who interact with children.

The immediate objective in establishing a Child Safety Pledge is to create a funding environment that rewards organizations that have adequate policies and procedures to prevent child sexual abuse through education, training, prevention, and reporting and simultaneously encourages non-compliant organizations to improve their policies and procedures.

The ultimate purpose is to create a safer, more transparent, and more accountable environment in organizations that work with children.

The Pledge:

Signatories to this document approve of coordinated efforts to make the Child Safety Pledge a broadly accepted principle for philanthropic giving to youth-serving organizations.

Recognizing that the Jewish community is not immune from the disturbing occurrences of sexual abuse of children in Youth Serving Organizations in both secular and faith-based realms;

Desiring to raise awareness of this issue and elevate it to a primary concern of the Jewish community;

Seeking a pro-active approach to effect change at both the organizational and community-wide level to do everything possible in order to guarantee the safety of all children in the care of Jewish organizations and programs;

Asserting the need for all individuals in youth-serving organizations who regularly interact with children to have adequate training in abuse prevention, and in how to recognize signs of abuse;

Embracing our moral responsibility to assure the safety of children in the care of Jewish programs and prioritize the well-being of victims/survivors of abuse, including creating environments where they can safely and comfortably speak out and take steps to have their needs met;

Affirming the necessity to respond swiftly and responsibly to suspected incidents of abuse in accordance with ethical and legal requirements, and;

Encouraging the adoption of comprehensive child sexual abuse prevention and response frameworks by each youth serving organization providing sufficient education, oversight, and ongoing review to assure strong implementation, including:

Written policies,
Personnel screening,
Training programs, and
Effective and legally compliant procedures for how to respond to suspected abuse.
Adopters pledge to

Require youth-serving organizations to which they make significant funding commitments to take appropriate steps to prevent and respond to sexual abuse of minors by adopting and implementing institution-wide measures that increase the safety of children in their care.