Thanks for helping!
Every now and then helpers support the work of Lead Safe Mama on social media (and elsewhere, too). I’ve written this post as a guide for people who have offered to come on board as Lead Safe Mama Helpers…
Below are some details about how this works — and specific guidelines for fka who want to participate in this work by helping to answer questions and respond to inquiries on the main Lead Safe Mama Facebook page.
Details
- Some helpers volunteer their time (Yay! Thank you!)
- Some helpers are paid for their time, too!
- Lead Safe Mama, LLC is committed to a minimum wage of $15 / hour for starting pay for any paid helpers (with pay raises and additional compensation whenever possible). [Lead Safe Mama, LLC requires and has a written subcontractor agreement for all paid helpers to sign before starting paid work.]
- Lead Safe Mama, LLC is also committed to (whenever possible) hiring mothers returning to the workforce after taking “time off” to raise their children.
- Lead Safe Mama, LLC is also committed to hiring parents (mothers and fathers and others!) of Lead Poisoned children, whenever possible.
Guidelines for Helpers on the main Lead Safe Mama Facebook page:
- First and foremost, all interactions with readers, friends and followers should be patient, polite, and respectful.
- At no point should any helpers offer any medical advice (and when appropriate, responses should include clear statements like “Lead Safe Mama is not a medical or healthcare provider, so please follow up with your doctor or medical professional for medical advice.”)
- When people have questions on the Facebook page, the main goal for Lead Safe Mama helpers is to direct them to the most appropriate post on this website, that best answers their question.
- Generally, all questions should be answered with a link to a relevant post on the blog. For example: “Here’s a post Tamara wrote about that… < insert link here >.“
- There are over 2,500 posts on the blog… this means there are posts to answer nearly every question, BUT if you cannot find an answer please direct readers to the Home Page of the Blog and the “Start Here” post (or the most appropriate sub-post on the Start Here post.)
- If helpers cannot find an answer to a reader’s question, please contact Tamara and ask her to point you in the right direction (towards the post with the best / most appropriate answer).
- If a reader comments that they just found out a child or other family member is Lead-poisoned, please share the link to the film with them (on YouTube) as a good place to start. Encourage them to watch the entire film, (without children underfoot if at all possible) — as it answers most questions for those new to the concern. Link: https://youtu.be/eRKlaC2EjL0
- If a reader asks about a specific brand or type of product, please share the category link for that product with them, and encourage them to scroll through all of the related posts for that category (which can provide a broader sense of context and similar items that I have tested.) Here’s an example of a category link (for the keyword “Jewelry”): https://tamararubin.com/category/jewelry/
- Alternately (to #8), there are now more than 30 category overview posts, and if the question can be answered with one of those posts, please share that link as well as the category link. These posts include topics like “Clear Glass”, “Glass Bottles”, “Made in France”, “Mexican Pottery” & “Hoses”. Here’s a link to all of the active category pages: https://tamararubin.com/category/summary-post-by-theme-2020/
- If a reader asks for a product recommendation, please just point them to the Lead Safe Mama Amazon Store or the “Safer Choices” post for that category of product – or the category summary post for that category of product. You can also (generally) give them directions on finding the “Shop” tab in the header menu of the blog (on the far right in desktop mode).
- Above all, when commenting on behalf of Lead Safe Mama, be professional — please avoid sharing your own personal anecdotes, experiences, opinions, or recommendations. We work hard to make sure that our content is strictly science-based, factual, and as free as possible of personal bias. So keep it simple — and just help direct people to the information they are looking for on the site.
- In response to any inquiries or comments which include Amazon links shared by readers… since one goal is for this work to pay for itself, and since affiliate income helps to cover the cost of the work, please provide, whenever possible, Lead Safe Mama’s affiliate links (supplied by Tamara) to replace the link posted by the reader. These can include a comment like “While this is not a product that Tamara specifically recommends, here is Lead Safe Mama’s affiliate link for the product you have asked about < link >.”
- In response to any type of question, if you need a specific affiliate link to share, please ask Tamara to get you that link as well.
- Again, please refrain from editorializing or offering personal advice. It’s often not practical to answer many questions with a short answer – which is why we have taken the time to write detailed answers to all questions on the blog. For example, the answer to the question “Can I use a LeadCheck® swab to test my dishes?” is not a simple answer!
- You can answer questions from your main personal profile OR you can create a LeadSafe profile (for example Mary LeadSafe Smith) to help identify yourself as a helper!
- If you answer a question as a moderator on the page (vs. under your own Facebook profile) please sign your initials to the response – so that folks know it is not Tamara responding directly.
- Helpers can keep a list of questions that have not been answered (so we can write posts in the future), but please don’t worry if you cannot answer a question — with hundreds of questions coming through the Facebook page every day, on many days, it’s simply not humanly possible to answer them all.
Specific Instructions for New Helpers:
- Observing all the above guidelines, review recent posts on the page and read all the comments.
- If a comment contains a question or mentions something that you know is addressed in a specific link – go grab that link from the blog, copy it and paste it in response to that question. [Take your time and make sure that you haven’t missed a comment from another helper that answers that question, but there are unanswered questions going back months… so start with the most recent ones and keep going until you run out of time!]
- Please make sure the answer you choose is truly optimally-relevant to the question asked; it’s really important that our readers feel (and are) accurately heard!
- You can also help by reading the direct reader posts to the Facebook page and answering those questions in the same way.
- It’s most efficient to help on a desktop or laptop computer (vs. a phone), both for ease and speed of accurate typing, and so you can easily go back and forth between the Facebook page and the blog — and we request that paid helpers use a desktop or laptop computer for this work.
That’s all I can think of right now! Please let me know if there are any points I have not covered! If you are interested in paid work helping in this way, please let me know and I will be in touch when an opportunity opens up. Most paid helpers help 5 to 7 hours a week (no more than 1 hour a day, which makes it easy to fit helping out into your schedule!)
A note to all the Lead Safe Mama helpers…
Thank you for being here. The work you do is critical. In 2019 alone, we had 7 people helping in various capacities — which made it possible for us to reach more than 1.9 million people (in over 200 countries!). Getting the message of Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention out to the world is true teamwork and your participation is so appreciated!
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
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