Safe Environments: Protecting Young Members While Building Community

At Called, we believe that fostering authentic connections within faith communities shouldn't come at the expense of safety. Today, we're excited to announce the launch of Safe Environments, a comprehensive set of features designed to create a more protected space for young people to grow in their faith journey.

Listening to Our Community

Over the past months, we've had the privilege of speaking with numerous Diocese and Parish leaders about their experiences with youth ministry in the digital age. These conversations revealed a clear need: a way to embrace the benefits of the digital community while ensuring appropriate boundaries between adults and minors.

A New Standard for Digital Safety

Safe Environments introduces several key protections that work together to create a secure space for all members:

Protected Messaging

We're implementing concrete boundaries around direct messaging to prevent private communications between adults and minors (under 18 years old). Young members can still connect with their peers, and adults can communicate with other adults.

Clear Identification

To support these boundaries, we've introduced a system that clearly indicates which community members are minors. This helps leaders understand how to interact appropriately with different community members.

Enhanced Moderation

Community leaders now have more tools at their disposal:

• Message deletion capabilities for inappropriate content
• Access to chat transcripts when needed
• Comprehensive reporting and blocking features

Clean, Safe Space

We've also added:

• Automatic profanity filtering to maintain appropriate discourse
• An ad-free environment to eliminate unwanted external content

Date of Birth 

Upon creating a new account or signing back into an existing one, all users will be required to input their date of birth. The purpose of this is to identify who is a minor and who isn't.

We collect birthdates solely to help ensure a safe environment, but this information remains private and secure. It is not shared with anyone in the community.

Here are a few other things to know about our approach with DOB's:

1. All minors will have a minor identification label that leaders can see.
2. Leaders will have the ability to report someone as "incorrect age" based on the label.
3. Our support team will have the ability to easily update birthdays on our end in the event that we need to. 

For the time being, birthday's will not be displayed on individual profiles.

What This Means for You

If you're currently using our platform, here's what you need to know:

• All your existing conversations remain intact
• The new messaging restrictions only apply to new direct message creation
• You'll notice new safety features appearing across the platform—there is no need to switch the feature on

Supporting Your Ministry

Safe Environments is designed to complement your existing youth protection protocols, providing an additional layer of security that allows you to focus on what matters most: building meaningful connections in your faith community.

Looking Forward

This is just the beginning of our commitment to creating a safer digital space for faith communities. We'll continue to work closely with religious leaders and youth ministry experts to evolve and enhance these protections.

Do you have questions about Safe Environments? Contact our support team and we'll be happy to help you understand these new features.