CISV International uses our official social media accounts to connect and engage with our community of Members, volunteers, parents/guardians, children, partners and the public.

Our (International’s) accounts include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. They exist to provide an online space for us to share stories about our people, programmes, projects and news with our community in fun and creative ways.

Social media is one tool in our communications toolbox to support our purpose to educate and inspire action for a more just and peaceful world.

Why we’ve created these guidelines

Social media is designed to appeal to our emotions, both positive and negative. Social media encourages all of us to react ‘in the moment’, when sometimes a slower, more considered response is needed.

Our social media accounts should uphold and protect CISV International’s values of friendship, inclusiveness, enthusiasm, engagement and cooperation.

We have produced these community guidelines to help everyone feel as comfortable, safe and confident as possible whenever you visit or interact with CISV International’s social media accounts.

We might need to make changes to these guidelines as things can change quickly in the online environment. If they’re important to you, please check back regularly.

What we need from you

We want our social media accounts to be a welcoming space where people feel comfortable to talk to us and each other. We ask that anyone engaging with our social media accounts shows courtesy, kindness and respect for each other. This includes that you:

  • Be respectful of others and their opinions at all times, even when they are opinions you disagree with.
  • Display empathy, understanding and compassion.
  • Be willing to put CISV conflict and resolution learning into practice.
  • Consider data protection and child safeguarding practices, do not share full names of participants, their location, birthdate, etc., the same goes for any adult without their consent. Do not tag the social media accounts of minors in posts or comments.
  • Consider people’s privacy, even if you have signed consent to use photos, i.e. taken during an official camp, consider if the pictured person would be comfortable with the image being posted. If in doubt ask them / their legal guardian.
  • Do not discriminate or promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, age or other protected characteristics.
  • Do not post content that could be seen to be defamatory, libellous, obscene, inflammatory, offensive, harassing, abusive, hateful, threatening, profane or personally abusive.
  • Do not post adverts or promote commercial products or services.
  • Only post other people’s content if you have permission from the rightful owner to do so. This includes photos and videos. This includes using photos found on the internet (i.e. a google image search).
  • Do not breach any of the terms of the social media platforms themselves.
  • If you are a volunteer, member of staff, or other CISV official make sure that you understand and follow our Positive Behaviour Policy and our Child Safeguarding Policy and Procedures. Remember that you are an ambassador for CISV, our mission and values every time you take part in a conversation online (whether you identify yourself in the conversation as belonging to CISV or not).

What we will do

We understand that we will face scrutiny and criticism on social media. We believe people are entitled to share their views and we won’t remove a post simply because it is negative.

If however, we believe a contribution goes against our guidelines we may hide or delete the comment, block the account that it has come from and/or report it to the social media platform. On Facebook, this will mean that any replies to that comment or post will be hidden or deleted (depending on the action we take). We also use filters on Facebook to automatically hide obscenities.

In certain cases, we may send comments to the police or take legal action in the case of threatening, libellous or defamatory posts.