What Would You Do?

Monday, October 24th, 2016

Imagine this scenario: You are a volunteer at your church, school, or organization’s Trunk or Treat event. Your main task is to make sure that kids are following the path of cars to keep the line moving. You notice a man walking around with a camera, taking photos of children. You don’t recognize the guy, but it’s probably OK, right? The parents seem to be happy that someone is taking professional photos of their child and promising to email them later. A week later, some of the parents are complaining that they never received their child’s picture. Should you have mentioned your concerns to the person in charge of the event?

Yes! Even though your job was to simply keep kids on task by keeping the lines moving, your obligation as a person working or volunteering around children and youth is to speak up if something doesn’t seem right. In this case, you didn’t know the guy who was taking pictures, and that was reason enough to simply ask the person in charge if there was a photographer set up for the event. It could be that this person had a legitimate right to be there. But what if he did not have permission to take pictures at the event? Your job is to listen to your internal voice and speak up.