Student Safety Policy

This document explains how TalkAbroad keeps online conversations safe. How we do this is guided by our organization ethic:

Enjoying healthy relationships that are identified by respect, commitment, and cultural understanding.

Hiring

TalkAbroad prioritizes potential conversation partners that are referred by local, in-country nonprofit organizations, a client university, or a pre-existing conversation partner.

Training

We train conversation partners to carefully follow these safety protocols:

1. Conversing about sex, religion, and politics is prohibited, except as instructed by the professor in the assignment they create on talkabroad.com.
2. Requesting or sharing personal contact information is prohibited, as well as any flirtatious or otherwise inappropriate behavior that does not align with our organizational ethic.
3. If something occurs during a conversation that makes a conversation partner uncomfortable, they are required to report it.

Monitoring

Our human resources and training team works closely with our technical support team so they are able to monitor conversations in real time. Students can request help while conversations are in progress.

Review

All conversations happen in TalkAbroad’s own online platform. All conversations are recorded and the data is archived after completion. Students, teachers and our evaluation team are able to review conversations after they are completed. This allows our team to follow up on requests to determine if our safety protocols were not followed and take the appropriate action.

Feedback

After each conversation, students are required to provide feedback before further conversations can be scheduled. Our team reviews all conversations rated 6/10 or lower.

Actions

If our safety policy is not followed, our human resources team investigates and takes appropriate action. These may include, but are not limited to, additional training, suspension, and removal of the conversation partner from our team.