We’re committed to provide an environment free from all forms of discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying against “you” and our “members” (“Leader”, “Volunteer”, “Ambassador”, “Employee” or “Staff).
While we may use simple language to address this issue, this is a very important topic to us, and we’re required by our moral standards not only by law to promote a happy environment where you can fully express and evolve, our most important purpose in “C3GB” (Coupla Guys and Gals Give Back) which we may referred to as “organization” is that you feel safe and protected.
As a charitable organization we care about everyone including you, because you are a fundamental part of our global aim to bring good to those needy and make a sustainable change into the future, we have to spread our ideas through an exemplary role model of correctness, good moral values, openness, and welcomeness for all.
Please read this anti-harassment, anti-bullying and non-discrimination policy (“policy” or “document”) closely, even though we hope and will try our best to avoid this policy to be enforced, you have to read this just in case and to serve as a good example to all your fellow volunteers, leaders our staff members or employees of what actions a real member of our organization must take to not fall under these undesirable situations as part of your code of conduct as member of our organization.
This policy applies to all leaders, volunteers, ambassadors, staff members, and guests participating in our programs and events (“members”) even while travelling for programs or related events of our organization.
Also, this policy applies to related communications about the organization, its events, its volunteers, leaders, staff and guests, which can take up the form of written communication such as email, text message, instant messaging apps, social media networks or spoken communications.
We wanted you to know that the following conducts performed by or towards any leader, volunteer, ambassador, staff or guest (“members”), client, vendor or anyone else who does business or engages with the Organization will not be tolerated.
Love is a two-way street, when two adults of the opposite sex or same gender love each other, they can engage in a consensual and non-hurting relationship, harassment on the contrary is any unwanted sexual advances, whether visual, verbal, written, or physical conduct of sexual nature, including any form of offensive behaviour, as in gender-based harassment of the opposite or same sex of the harasser.
A Supervisor, Employee or someone in a higher level position than yours, insists to have sex with you in exchange for a better position, grade, or entry into a program, this behavior is considered harassment regardless of whether the leader, volunteer, employee or guest accedes to the sexual request.
A leader repeatedly sends sex jokes on an e-mail or through social media networks even when asked to stop.
Volunteer colleagues that rate other volunteers’ bodies, commenting about their clothing and appearance in a sexual manner.
A Volunteer’s ex-boyfriend starts spreading rumors about his sex life and that of his ex-girlfriend to discomfort her, so no one comes across her.
The following list is merely exemplary and does not include a complete list of impermissible harassment conduct, that include one or a variety of the following actions:
Unwanted sexual advances.
Offering benefits to members in exchange of sexual favors.
Retaliation or threatening reprisal after a negative response to sexual advances
Visual conduct, like gazing in an unpleasant, malicious or lascivious way (leering), making sexual gestures, displaying sexually suggestive objects, pictures, cartoons, or posters.
Verbal conduct, like using derogatory comments, epithets, slurs and jokes; that includes verbal sexual advances or prepositions, verbal abuse of a sexual nature in an insulting manner, as in graphic sexual commentaries about other member’s body using sexually degrading words to describe other people.
Written conduct, as sending to send suggestive or obscene messages, letters, note, or invitations, using sms, emails, messaging apps or social media networks.
Physical Conduct, as touching, groping, assaulting, or impeding or blocking movements to pressure a person to fall into sexual advances.
If someone is subject to one of the above impermissible harassment conducts, it should be considered under harassment when:
Submitting to such conduct is an implicit or explicit term or condition of employment, admission of leaders, volunteers, ambassadors, staff or guests into any of the organization’s programs.
Submission or rejection of such conduct is decisive when making employment decisions, or leaders, staff related decisions.
The purpose of the conduct is to affect or interfere with our member’s performance, or creating a hostile, offensive or intimidating environment in the organization.
Sexual favors, like unwanted sexual advances, are a condition to any benefit (employment or program related) upon and exchange of sexual favors.
Our organization mission is all about helping people, making a difference, righting wrongs, on the contrary bullying is an unwanted, devastating behaviour.
Bullying is defined as an unwanted, unwelcomed, unreasonable or aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance, such impermissible conduct is used as a way to undermine, intimidate, demean or humiliate a person’s dignity, and can be made by an individual or a group of people.
A member of the organization creates a fake social media account to spread false rumors about other members of our organization and/or starts posting embarrassing pictures or videos about them.
An employee starts receiving verbal threats or hurtful comments by another co-worker.
A volunteer begins mimicking another organization member.
A group of leaders form a gang to push or attack a leader.
A member of the organization starts gossiping about another member.
This list is not inclusive of all forms of the bullying behavior, while it can occur in isolated incidents, it typically follows a pattern of persistent and intimidating actions, such as:
Physical Abuse, like impeding, assaulting or blocking movements and any use of physical force to intimate and humiliate someone.
Verbal Abuse, including abusive, improper or offensive language, as in insults, teasing, spreading rumors, or allusive remarks, hints or undertone; like criticizing actions, appearance or behavior without a base; and criticizing contributions and achievements in our organization.
Psychological Abuse, such as unfairly blaming a leader, staff or guest for mistakes, setting someone up for failure, deliberately excluding leader from group projects, activities or programs, performing practical jokes, and belittling or disregarding others’ opinions or suggestions.
Mobbing, like the bullying or social isolation of a leader, staff or guest through collective unjustified accusations, humiliation, harassment, group intimidation or emotional abuse.
Program’s related manipulation, when isolating a leader, staff member or guest from normal program’s interactions, excessive supervision, demands or delegation of duties, and setting unrealistic deadlines to finish a task.
At C3GB we believe everyone is equal and has an opportunity as peers to fulfill our philanthropic mission, we will not tolerate any form of discrimination against or attempted by our members (leaders, volunteers, ambassadors, staff members or guests), Discrimination is defined as a different treatment received or perceived by our members on the basis of a protected category of person in the context of any activity or organization’s program.
Two male leaders are seen walking holding hands and start receiving hateful comments and gestures from leaders passing by, because of their sexual orientation.
A female muslim volunteer decides to wear a hijab because of this she is not accepted to form part of any program of the organization.
A leader of chinese origin and because of that alone he is left out of a leadership program.
A volunteer who is a 65 years old military man of latino heritage, because of these conditions he is not able to partake in any of our leadership programs.
A volunteer is in a wheelchair and while he thinks he can be valuable to this organization he is not able to partake in any organization’s program.
Our organization will not tolerate any discrimination against people because of:
Skin color, race, ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship, national origin. so whether you're black, white, hispanic, orient, asian, you have a place among us.
Individual’s sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation. We really don’t think that if you’re male, female, transgender, straight, gay or lesbian you’re different from anyone else.
Disability whether physical or psychological, medical condition, pregnancy, childbirth; so if you think you’re up to help and serve in our organization that’s okay with us.
Age, marital status, military status; we don’t care about your age or if you’re serving the military or if you’re married.
Religion or particular creed or beliefs. No problem if you’re jew, muslim or agnostics you are also welcomed here.
As an example but not limited to the activities in which we will not accept any kind of discrimination are:
Hiring or Firing staff members, selecting or dismissing leaders and guests, vendors or provision of services.
Recruiting and advertising on program opportunities and jobs is inclusive of any person under our organization’s standard and based solely in a professional manner not on discriminatory prejudices.
Upgrading and promotions are based on your performance only, rest assured that if you successfully complete your milestones you’re getting up in the ladder.
You need to file a complaint, as soon as you can; gather all the information you can about the incident and let us know immediately. You can be a part of the solution and your actions can help others to avoid them going through this.
You should contact us by phone, e-mail, sending a letter or personally contacting us if you think or feel you’re subject to discrimination, bullying or harassment. Our board of directors will take appropriate measures to mitigate and investigate these conducts, we know people that suffer from this intolerable situations are under a heavy burden and we’re here to help you.
Upon witnessing an act of harassment, bullying, discrimination or retaliation, based on actual or perceived actions that constitute such a behavior, you need to take immediate steps to help your fellow leaders, staff members or guests to help us eliminate the hostile environment, and prevent the conduct from happening again, we know it can pose a threat to stand against some of those conducts, so it will be better if you feel unsafe to file a written complaint to inform us of this situation so we can take the appropriate measures.
Our first defensive strategy is education, we are compromised to educate our members to avoid harassment, retaliation, bullying and discriminatory behaviour, we know this can be insufficient sometimes so we have a Guideline to cope with it.
Upon witnessing, getting notice or being exposed to one of the above undesirable actions you must file a written complaint immediately with a full description of the perceived or actual behaviors of harassment, bullying, discrimination or retaliation, gather as much information as you can, and send it to one of the Program Managers, if your program manager is unavailable or you feel it would be inappropriate to contact that person, you should immediately contact the board of directors. A copy of the filed complaint will be sent to our board of directors. we will inform you immediately that we have opened an investigation about the situations you have reported. In case a supervisor or manager in our organization becomes aware of a possible unlawful action they must immediately inform our board of directors of such a behaviour.
Although we always trust you, we need to fully investigate the issue so we can be sure that such undesirable actions have taken place otherwise someone can file a complaint without proof against anyone, that’s what our lawyers call due process of law, when the investigation is completed the organization will take appropriate corrective actions, but we might take immediate precautions to safeguard you and others to the extent possible.
As we stated, a copy will be sent to the board of directors, they and their designees, or your manager or supervisor will use this information to quickly investigate your allegations, we have a privacy of information policy in place that covers you during the investigation.
During the investigation process we’ll use all the information you gave us to quickly and discreetly investigate your allegations, we will protect your privacy to the extent possible, your confidentiality or that of any persons involved including witnesses will be protected against unnecessary disclosure, the organization can trust a third party investigator who is bound by his professional ethics to avoid unnecessary disclosure of the information, he will inform the board of directors of the outcome of such an investigation. The board of directors or their designees will inform you (complainant) that the investigation is finished and depending on the circumstances the results of the investigation. We will keep complaints and the terms of the resolution confidential.
The investigator whether being the board of directors, its designees or a third party investigator will inform or report their findings to the board of directors which will make the final determination about the complaint, including what corrective actions should be taken, that includes disciplinary actions, or immediate termination or expulsion from our organization, we will inform you of the outcome of the investigation and what actions we have taken to protect you or any of our members.
Our Organization will not retaliate or discriminate against any individual for making a complaint of harassment, bullying or discrimination or for participating in the investigation of any such complaint.
We will do our best to keep you safe, but in case you’re not satisfied with how we’re handling your complaint, you can also contact the federal or state enforcement agency to seek for legal relief. The Law protects you from retaliation for opposing or reporting unlawful harassment, bullying or discrimination, or for participating in any process of an investigation conducted by our organization or a state or federal agency with respect to such complaints.
We will take disciplinary actions if any member retaliates against another member for engaging in any process of an investigation conducted by us or any state or federal enforcement agency.
Any member of our organization (volunteers, leaders, ambassadors, staff members or guests) that engages in harassment, bullying, discrimination or retaliation, including any manager or supervisor who had known of any act of harassment, bullying, discrimination or retaliation and took and took no actions to stop it or never filed a report, may be personally liable for monetary damages or penalty. C3GB will not pay personal damages assessed against any of our members.
We want you to become an exemplary model to others, in order to do so you have to avoid falling into this category of non-tolerated conducts by this organization, additionally you are prohibited to partake in or violate one of the following list that constitute other civil right offenses.
INTIMIDATION: is defined as acts of implied threats or acts that cause an unreasonable fear of harm in another member of our organization.
An example of intimidation would be:
*A leader that has received a threat from another member to compel or deter him from filing a complaint against him or another person.
VIOLENCE: causing physical harm to any member is forbidden.
STALKING: is any conduct directed at a specific member of our organization, that is unwelcome and would cause a reasonable person to feel fear, as pursuing, following, harassing or interfering with another member’s peace and safety.
Example of stalking:
A Volunteer shows up at another volunteer’s house, asking him or her to go on a date with him, after being rejected the volunteer stays at the volunteer’s house front door and follows him or her everywhere he or she goes.
HAZING: we are a big group in this organization, and as such we won’t allow groups and sorority initiations. Everyone has their place into their work groups, so no pledging and initiations that can cause physical or psychological harm or social ostracisms will be tolerated.
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT: as you may already know, state laws defines violent and non consensual acts as crimes and felonies.
An Example of Sexual Misconduct would be:
SEXUAL PREDATION: We won’t allow sexual predation into our organization, in any case a sexual pattern or predatory conduct takes place, we will quickly investigate the situation and the person or persons involved will be subject to the corresponding disciplinary actions up to expulsion or termination, this organization wants to make it clear that we are not a dating organization, and our members need to be focused into our purpose to help the needy, sexual predators on the contrary are driven by the fulfillment of their basic sexual instincts and are not focused into their corresponding tasks. In other words: if your agenda and involvement with this organization is to make sexual or dating advances to other members, you are in the wrong place.
QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION
If you have any other question about this policy or require further information on the subject of harassment, bullying, discrimination or retaliation please contact us immediately we will be there to help you.