Friends of the Children

Introduction:

Friends of the Children Chicago is a nonprofit organization that provides long-term mentoring to youth who face the greatest obstacles. The organization needed a reliable and scalable solution to track the location of its mentors and youth during their outings. The organization implemented Hapn trackers, a cloud-based GPS tracking solution that enabled real-time visibility, alerts, and reporting. As a result, the organization improved its youth protection policies, enhanced its compliance, and increased its operational efficiency.

Challenge

Friends of the Children Chicago is part of a national network that empowers youth through relationships with professional mentors called Friends. The organization selects children from kindergarten to high school graduation and pairs them with a paid, full-time Friend who supports them for 12+ years. The Friends spend four hours per week with each child, taking them to various activities in schools, communities, and homes.

One of the main challenges that the organization faced was ensuring the safety and protection of its youth during their outings with their Friends. The organization had strict youth protection policies that required constant oversight and documentation of where the mentors and youth were at all times. However, the organization relied on Outlook calendar events as the sole reference for tracking their location. This method was inefficient, inaccurate, and risky. It did not provide sufficient visibility or protection for the mentors and youth. It also exposed the organization to potential legal liabilities if something went wrong.

The organization needed a solution that could help it overcome these challenges and enable it to track its mentors and youth more effectively.

Solution

Friends of the Children decided to look for a tracking solution that could meet its needs. It came across Hapn as a potential option. Hapn is a cloud-based GPS solution that helps businesses track their most important assets – anytime, anywhere. Hapn offers various features such as:

• Real-time visibility: Hapn provides a live map that shows the most recent known location of each tracker
• Alerts and notifications: Hapn allows users to set up custom alerts for various events such as movement, speeding, low battery, and boundary crossing
• Reporting: Hapn generates reports on historical data such as location history, time spent at each location, and distance traveled

The organization decided to give Hapn a try. It purchased several trackers from Hapn’s website and activated them easily via a few simple steps. It then distributed the trackers among its mentors and instructed them to carry them during their outings with their youth.

The organization also downloaded Hapn’s mobile app on their phones and accessed Hapn’s web platform on their computers. This allowed them to monitor the location of their mentors and youth from any device, anywhere, anytime.

Results

By implementing Hapn trackers, Friends of the Children achieved significant improvements in its safety and protection practices. Some of the results included:

• Improved visibility: The organization could see where each mentor and youth were at any given time on Hapn’s live map. This enabled them to locate them easily if needed.
• Enhanced compliance: The organization could use Hapn’s reports to document where each mentor and youth went during their outings. This helped them comply with their internal policies and external regulations.
• Increased efficiency: The organization could use Hapn’s alerts to notify them if any mentor or youth left or entered a designated area. This saved them time from checking manually or calling frequently.