How We Protect Young People
Our Mentees Program includes minors. These are our standards. They are not suggestions, they are not subject to convenience, and they apply to every adult who serves this program without exception, including our founder and including guest speakers.
Any parent, any Mentee, or any member may hold us to every one of them.
Background checks
Every adult who mentors completes a criminal background check and a sex offender registry screening before his first meeting, and repeats it every two years. No exceptions and no grandfathering. Anyone required to register as a sex offender in any state is not eligible to serve in any capacity, and that has no appeal.
The two-adult rule
No adult is ever alone with a minor behind a closed door. Meetings happen in public places, in open settings, or with a second adult present. This applies in every room and every zone, every time.
Communication
No adult communicates one to one privately with a minor. Messages go through a group thread or copy a parent. Remote mentoring happens by scheduled video call only, and the parent knows when it is happening.
Transportation
No adult transports a minor alone without written parental permission on file.
Photos and recordings
No image, video, voice, or quote of a minor is used for any purpose without separate written consent from a parent or guardian. That consent is optional, it has individual permission boxes rather than one blanket checkbox, and declining it changes nothing about a young man's participation. If nothing is signed, nothing is used.
Parental access
A parent or guardian signs the application for any Mentee under eighteen, receives the meeting calendar, and is welcome at any session, unannounced, without asking first. A parent may withdraw a young man at any time, for any reason, without explaining it to us.
A named person
One leader is responsible for safeguarding. Parents and Mentees receive his name and direct contact at acceptance. He is not a committee and he is not a form. He is a person you can call.
Reporting
Any concern about a young person's safety goes immediately to the founder and the safeguarding lead, and to the appropriate authorities where Arizona law requires it. We do not investigate internally first. That sequence is deliberate and it does not bend for reputation, for relationship, or for convenience.
Training
Every adult completes a short safeguarding orientation before being matched with a young man.
When Something Is Beyond Us
Our mentors are businessmen, not counselors. A young man will eventually tell one of them something past what a mentor should carry alone.
Every mentor follows the same four steps, and the point of writing them down is that he does not have to decide in the moment. He listens and takes it seriously. He does not counsel, because he is not qualified and trying anyway can do real harm to a young man who finally said something out loud. He tells the safeguarding lead the same day, without exception, and for a minor the parent is brought in. And he hands the young man a name, because we keep vetted Christian counselors on a referral list so a mentor can say a name out loud instead of promising to look into it.
None of that replaces prayer. It sits alongside it. Praying with a young man and getting him to someone qualified were never competing choices.
Why We Publish This
One bad actor destroys trust for everyone. More importantly, one bad actor destroys a child. Prevention is not optional, and a standard nobody can read is not really a standard.
Questions, or a Concern
If you are a parent considering this program and something here is not clear, call us. 602.456.7632.
If you have a safeguarding concern about a Mentee or the program, contact us immediately at 602.456.7632 or [email protected].