The South Shore YMCA has found a new, interactive way to make sure its staff knows how to keep thousands of kids each year safe. It’s using gaming technology to make training more engaging. At the South Shore YMCA, there are about 40,000 members, 12,000 of which are kids.
“The safety of children is our absolute number one priority no matter what,” said Nick Benidixen, the Associate Executive Director at the South Shore YMCA. “And it’s just part of the world that we live in these days. You never know what could possibly come through those doors.”
Nick Benidixen oversees much of the day-to-day operations at the South Shore YMCA. With a large staff especially during the summer camp months making sure everyone receives adequate training is challenging—but essential.
“A lot of times with these trainings, there’s kind of a connotation behind them that they’re boring and you just get through it to get through it,” said Benidixen. “With this one, it’s much more interactive.”
“This is a simulation, right, of how something could get reported to us,” said Alexandra Mason, the director of Human Resources and Training at the South Shore YMCA as she showed how the program works.
Mason helped bring in this first-of-a-kind training program for the Y. It’s a game-based training program filled with interactive situations where the trainee has to find the best way to handle the scenario.
“The way to learn is through play which psychology has shown that when you learn through play, you retain more, you’re more engaged, you’re more, you know, inclined to repeat that and do it over and over again until we prefer a perfect a certain topic,” said Mason.
Mason says in one year of using the new training program, they’ve had over 100,000 playthroughs. Employees can get in their required training anywhere and with a leaderboard, it has created some friendly competition.
“And then one of my staff will see that I’d be at their score and they’ll go back and they’ll beat my score again,” said Benidixen.
Through the simulations, employees are learning to identify signs of distress, navigate sensitive situations, and build trust with children.
“So not only are you getting the benefit of having staff go through this training, make sure of completing everything, understand the training, but almost builds a kind of team bonding sense to add around something like this, which is such a sensitive topic, it is incredibly important to be behind each other 100%,” said Benidixen.
With staff no longer dreading on-boarding and annual trainings, Mason says she’s seen the results.
“We all have we all have, you know, a role in this in preventing child abuse,” said Mason. “And the YMCA is doing their part, right? We’re doing our part in the community. So that’s why this training is so important to us.”
This is the first YMCA in the country to use this type of training program. The South Shore YMCA’s goal is to get all of their trainings on this platform for staff to have access to.
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