Eluna’s Expert Voices – Importance of Safe Communities

Building on our conversation about the new 8th C of Community, Kelly & Kristina take this one step further and address the importance of building safe communities by setting boundaries and providing direct connections to safe adults. Here are two excellent pointers pulled from their years of parenting and mentoring experience:

Surround yourself by supportive people and set boundaries

“Community – We look at both within our family, within our neighborhood, school community, within our church community, and also for us we try to talk about our online communities. The first piece is we want to make sure we are surrounding ourselves by people who are supportive of our beliefs and our values and our family. In some cases we put up boundaries. That includes with certain family members and community members and kids at school and different instagram accounts. Some are helpful and some are not…What kind of people, what kind of community is important for all of us and then really leaning into them.” – Kelly, Mother

Build connections with safe adults within your community

“Our camp weekend is this weekend. We are doing a safe adults…experience. We are bringing in some safe adults from the community in different roles. We have a pastor, we have a coach, we have someone from the Boys & Girls Club, just several different roles coming in. They are going to come and spend some time with the kids, introduce themselves and talk about where they are at in the community. So, trying to connect them with those people, build that community around them. But also, camp is a community and it really feels like that when we are there.” – Kristina, Clinical Director & Mentor

Part of building a safe community, is also helping children identify safe spaces in their life. To do this, we recommend this Safe Space Activity that you can try at home, school, or camp!

Click here to see a full list of Expert Voices videos!