Addressing topics you should avoid

Having an agreement from the Digital Ambassador team or your own Personal Code of Conduct can help set the ground rules for your relationships with the adults you will work with. There are times when you may be asked to work on topics that are best left to others. You will probably build some strong relationships with the adults you work with. They will come to trust you. There are still some topics that are best handled by someone else.

Topics you should avoid and ways to handle them:

• Banking, credit card, and financial information. Part of being a modern digital citizen is understanding online banking and paying bills online. Your team may develop general guidance on how to access banking or credit card websites, but you should avoid accessing them directly with another person. Instead, you may consider contacting the financial institution or a financial expert to speak with a group or to share specific information about their services to clients.
• Healthcare information. Someone’s health records are PII. They are private. Health companies that provide access to those have clear policies about who can and cannot access someone’s records. That does not mean that some adult learners may ask you to help them navigate health records or medical websites. A healthcare professional is the best person to address these requests. Consider if you can have a healthcare specialist present to the group with the Digital Ambassadors serving as helpers during the session to get over technical hurdles.
• Online shopping. While you can buy almost anything online and get it delivered to you, you should be careful not to engage in online shopping with your adult learner. It’s perfectly acceptable to develop materials to help people understand how some common online shopping websites operate, such as Amazon.com or the local grocery store. That would entail general online practices like creating secure passwords, keeping PII safe, and navigating a shopping cart. Try to avoid shopping with someone, however.

If you find out information about someone that concerns you while you are working with them, share it with your team’s coordinator. You may determine that the person you’re working with may seem depressed, is hiding poor health, or has had a bad interaction lately that has made them very upset. It’s fine to be concerned, but it is not your role to deal with those or similar issues. There are those who can, so informing them is the best course of action.