Safeguarding

Safeguarding & Participant Protection

EVEC Athens hosts and sends young people through Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps. Some of them are under 18. This page explains what we do to keep participants safe, who is responsible, and how to raise a concern.

Who this covers

• Participants in youth exchanges and training courses, including those aged under 18
• European Solidarity Corps volunteers hosted by EVEC in Athens
• Trainees and interns on placement with us
• Local and online volunteers
• Our own staff, volunteers and trainers, and any partner working with our participants

Our commitments

• Participants are treated with respect regardless of age, nationality, gender, disability, religion, sexual orientation or background.
• Harassment, bullying, discrimination, and any form of physical, emotional or sexual abuse are not tolerated.
• Concerns are taken seriously, recorded, and acted on — not dismissed or handled informally.
• Nobody is disadvantaged for raising a concern in good faith.

Before an activity

• For any role that involves working with people under 18, we request a criminal-record certificate (ποινικό μητρώο).
• Everyone joining us receives a safeguarding briefing during orientation, covering conduct expectations, boundaries, and how to report a concern.
• For participants under 18, we require written parental or guardian consent before the activity, and we agree supervision arrangements with the sending organisation.

During an activity

• Every hosted participant is given a named contact at EVEC and a phone number they can use for the duration of their stay, including outside working hours in an emergency.
• Accommodation and activity venues are chosen with participant safety in mind.
• Where an activity involves minors, supervision responsibilities are agreed in writing with the sending organisation before arrival.

How to report a concern

Email youth@evec.org.gr, marking the message Safeguarding. It reaches Mrs Mirlena Charisi, President, who is the accountable person for safeguarding at EVEC Athens.

Tell us what happened, when, who was involved, and what you would like to happen next. If you prefer not to give your name, we will still look into it, although that can limit what we are able to do.

What happens next:

• We acknowledge within 2 working days.
• We agree immediate steps to keep the person safe.
• We look into what happened and tell you the outcome. If it will take longer than expected, we tell you when to expect an answer.
• Where a criminal offence may have occurred, we contact the Greek authorities.

If you are not satisfied with our response

For activities funded by Erasmus+ or the European Solidarity Corps, you can escalate to the Greek National Agency, INEDIVIM (Foundation for Youth and Lifelong Learning), which supervises our accreditations:

• Erasmus+ KA1 Youth Accreditation — 2023-1-EL02-KA150-YOU-000188397
• European Solidarity Corps Quality Label — 2023-1-EL02-ESC50-QLA-000195138

You can also use our complaints procedure for anything that is not a safeguarding matter.

Online volunteering — EVEC Volunteer Academy

The Academy is our online volunteering programme, open from the age of 15, on evec.org.gr and in our Android app. Because it runs online rather than in person, the arrangements differ from a hosted activity. This section sets them out.

Registration. Anyone under 18 is registered first by a parent or guardian, never by themselves; the young person then sets up their own profile and gives their own agreement. If the young person does not use the link within 14 days, everything we hold about them is deleted automatically and the parent is told.

What a parent or guardian receives. A young person under 18 gives us no email address of their own, so every email the Academy sends about them goes to their parent or guardian: confirmation that they joined, each task they are given, each review result, a new level, and leaving or deletion. A parent can ask us at any time for a copy of everything we hold and of the work their child has sent, and we send it. There is no parent sign-in yet. The young person is told all of this.

How we communicate. Everything happens inside the Academy. A volunteer can write to the Academy team in the Messages tab; every member of Academy staff can read that thread, so it is never one adult alone with a young person, and it allows up to 3 messages a day. Staff never contact a volunteer by phone, private email or social media, and never ask to.

Contact between volunteers. There is no chat, forum or private messaging between volunteers. The one place volunteers see each other’s work is a graphics call: when an article is approved for publishing, volunteers may each propose an image for it. The writer sees the proposals labelled A, B, C, without names or links; only staff see who made which. To read the article while the call is open, the volunteers get a link to its document, at any age; Google may show them the name of the account it belongs to. Writers are asked to keep their name out of the document, and a writer who does not want their document shared can ask for a copy made by EVEC to be given instead.

What volunteers never send. When they register, every volunteer agrees not to send any of the following:

• nudity or sexual content;
• violent or gory images or text;
• hate, harassment or bullying, or anything that insults or mocks people or groups;
• other people’s personal details or faces without their written permission;
• work copied from someone else.

Anything like this is removed, and we may close the account that sent it. If a young person may be at risk, we follow the steps under “How to report a concern” above.

Reporting. Every Academy screen has a “Report a problem” link, and a writer can report any image proposed for their article. A reported image is hidden at once while our team looks at it. Every report also reaches Mrs Mirlena Charisi, who is responsible for safeguarding.

Reviewers. Only adults on the EVEC team review a young person’s work. Reviewers receive the same safeguarding briefing as staff, and the criminal-record requirement above applies to them.

Photos and video. Where a volunteer produces photos or video, we ask separately for permission to use their first name, to show their face, and to tag a personal social media account. These are three different things, and each can be refused without affecting the others. Volunteers are asked never to include anyone else’s face without written permission, and never anything that shows where they live or which school they attend. Location data is removed from every file before it is used.

Withdrawing and deleting. A parent or guardian can withdraw a young person at any time, without giving a reason; access closes the same day. A young person can also delete their own account in the Academy (My file → Delete my account), and their parent or guardian is told by email. Work already published stays published, but the name on it is removed on request. How deletion works.

Until 18. Until a volunteer turns 18, their parent or guardian keeps the right to raise concerns and to withdraw them.

Concerns about the Academy are raised in exactly the same way as any other — see the top of this page.

Responsibility and review

Accountable person: Mrs Mirlena Charisi, President, EVEC Athens — European Voluntary and Educational Center (EVROPAIKO ETHELONTIKO KAI EKPAIDEFTIKO KENTRO). Registered office: Kallistratous 89, 157 71 Zografou, Athens, Greece.

This policy is reviewed at least once a year.