Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Safe Havens International, Inc. (SHI)?
• Who should use SHI services?
• What is a crisis plan?
• Are your planning templates simply a “plan in a can?”
• Do you provide any services in Spanish?
• Can we customize or modify your training programs to fit our school?
• Do you have any presentations that are suitable for students?
• Can you conduct train-the-trainer sessions?
• Do you conduct media interviews?
• Our school is working within a limited budget; can you provide grant writing services?
• How should I choose a school safety consultant?
• How does Chris walk with all those weapons?
• How do you fly to conferences with all those weapons?
• Why does Chris look so young?
  

What is Safe Havens International, Inc. (SHI)?
We are a non-profit safety center. Operating as a true non-profit, only 10% of all revenues generated in fiscal year 2004-2005 went to salary and benefits for our dedicated personnel. Our analysts are dedicated to helping schools internalize school safety expertise rather than creating profits or long term reliance on our services. Review the credentials of our analysts and you will see years of service as practitioners rather than consulting experience as our primary backgrounds. Read our books and you will see the concepts we first developed are now taught by most experts in the field of school safety. Call our clients and you will find they have been fully satisfied with our services. We have never accepted any form of compensation to endorse any commercial product or service so we can provide neutral recommendations for equipment and service companies. For us, it is about kids, not dollars.
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Who should use SHI services?
Our services are suitable for any organization interested in establishing or improving their safety programs. Our services have been provided to schools, businesses, churches and governments.
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What is a crisis plan?
A crisis plan is an "all hazards" approach to managing any potential crisis, including major incidents that indirectly affect any organization. A crisis plan is literally a plan of action taken to protect the property and lives of people. SHI can assist your organization in developing a quality plan that meets your specific needs.
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Are your planning templates simply a “plan in a can?”
Absolutely not. We do not advocate purchasing a plan from any vendor. Any crisis plan must be tailored to meet the unique needs of your organization and community. School officials have found plans written by school safety consultants and “crisis plans” they have purchased to be unreliable and in some instances even dangerous. After many requests, Safe Havens International began a three year project to develop a set of relatively inexpensive plan development templates that allow private schools, public school districts and community partners to develop truly customized school safety plans with a greatly reduced amount of staff time, cost and with increased efficiency. The first and to date only planning system of its type, the planning system includes more than 350 pages of carefully developed templates that can be easily vetted with local emergency response and community service officials and then quickly modified to fit local needs, risks and resources. Not a simple canned plan or fill in the blank approach, the templates make it easy to develop all four plan sections while allowing for the creation of a truly customized plan. Our templates are more comprehensive and cost effective than any school safety planning product available and is the only information product available that is consistent with the United States Department of Education school crisis planning model for a four phase all hazards plan.
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Do you provide any services in Spanish?
Yes we do. SHI understands the diversity that exists in every organization. Therefore, we are very proud to offer several of our training courses in Spanish. We also provide several of our template protocols in Spanish. If you have specific needs, please contact us.
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Can we customize or modify your training programs to fit our school?
Of course! We will be happy to customize any of our services to fit your school community.
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Do you have any presentations that are suitable for students?
Yes. Our bullying program, “Weakfish” has been well received by students – particularly at the middle and high school level. As a matter of fact, after a group of elementary and high school students in Warrenton North Carolina heard “Weakfish” they petitioned the Superintendent, Dr. Spain, to have Michael Dorn return to present the program to other students.
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Can you conduct train-the-trainer sessions?
Sure. We recommend this type of training to allow the school system to internalize their capacity to redeliver the training.
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Do you conduct media interviews?
Though we focus on our work as advocates for children rather than promotion of our efforts through the media, Safe Havens personnel have frequently been sought out by the media from around the world. Our primary emphasis in media relations has been to attempt to undo the severe damage that has been done by individuals who provide alarmist information in an effort to create consulting business or to sell school safety products. This is an effect you will see in any field, but we think it is particularly upsetting to see this exploitation of a topic where young lives are at stake. The harm these individuals cause is immeasurable. To this end, our analysts have been interviewed by or featured on Larry King Live, 20/20, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight With Peter Jennings, the BBC, the Associated Press, the New York Times, Time Magazine, the London Times and hundreds of other media organizations.
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Our school is working within a limited budget; can you provide grant writing services?
Absolutely. Our grant writers have an 85% award rate for grants they have written and a 63% award rate for our clients who have utilized our free grant templates. Our grant writing projects are typically pro bono efforts at no cost to the school districts and state agencies we assist. Each year, our grant writers obtain millions of dollars in grant funds for our clients to help them implement new safety programs. Our grant writers focus on the client’s needs rather than our involvement in the final grant project. To ensure quality, we can only assist a limited number of school systems each year. To enhance the chances of a successful grant application, we prefer to start working with our client districts and states far ahead of the grant announcement. Contact us today to discuss working with Safe Havens on a grant application.
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How should I choose a school safety consultant?
Very carefully. According to the literature, qualified school safety consultants should have an emergency management AND relevant school safety background. SHI’s diverse team of experts has more than a century of global experience working with schools to enhance safety, emergency preparedness and recovery capabilities. Our analysts have unparalleled full time experience as practitioners as well as advanced expertise, extensive formal training, dozens of advanced professional certifications and an unprecedented depth of technical knowledge & research. We have assisted dozens of state agencies and most federal agencies involved in youth safety, and we have worked & done research in a number of foreign countries. We have worked with more than two thousand schools, school systems and youth facilities.

Our experts have authored and co-authored hundreds of articles and more than twenty books on school safety including several of the most influential school safety publications in print today. Our training videos and DVDs are in use by more than 50,000 organizations in over 30 countries. The FBI, FEMA, U.S. Secret Service, ATF, TSA, U.S. Department of Education, Texas Rangers, Israel Police and British intelligence and security services are among the organizations that have utilized our videos for training purposes. Safe Havens personnel were directly involved with the development of the United States Department of Education safe school planning model and the emergency operations planning templates for use by more than 4,000 Boys and Girls Clubs worldwide.
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How does Chris walk with all those weapons?
In short, he can’t, at least not very well. With a record of 150+ weapons concealed in just baggy jeans and a shirt, it is of course an exaggerated demonstration. He can walk, but only very stiffly, which would give away his presentation. Someone with only a few weapons would have a much easier time walking.
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How do you fly to conferences with all those weapons?
We don’t – we did before 9/11, but we now ship them a few weeks in advance to each presentation. Since we ship them so far ahead of time to ensure delivery before the presentation, we have 3-4 sets of weapons, so the presentation is different every time. We use the services of the United States Postal Service (USPS) because of their reliability & cost effectiveness – we formerly used UPS and FedEx until they repeatedly lost and damaged our packages.
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In addition, we do not use any real firearms – only rubber replicas. All of the knives, clubs, impact weapons, etc. are real, and most of them were actually seized from students at school.

Why does Chris look so young?
No, he isn’t 12 – he’s a 22 year old college student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He may look young, but he’s been writing & presenting on school safety since before Safe Havens’ inception. He gave his first presentation while still in the 8th grade (1997), a weapons presentation for the Adel County, Georgia school board. Since then he has made a name for himself by presenting in over 25 states and for countless national & international conferences.

In addition to his work experience, Chris’ age allows him to bring to the table the perspective of a student, and he has a solid background in research & writing.
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