Youth Program Policies

As a Youth Recreation Camp licensed by the NH Department of Health and Human Services, we are expected to provide public information on our Staff Health Information Policy and Transgender Policy for Youth. We provide additional information where it provides context or clarification in relation to our values and other policies.

Mission & Values

The mission of The Fourth Place is to create spaces where geeks feel at home, and everyone is welcome. We work for each space we create to be a home for everyone who loves games, comics, and geek culture.

To live up to our mission and vision, we strive to create a community that clearly embodies our values. We do this by working continually for our words, actions, and impact to model and encourage our community values of Enthusiasm, Diversity, Inclusion, and Respect, and organizational values to Have Fun, ensure Everyone is Welcome, Be Honest, and Do No Harm— and learning together from our victories and mistakes. 

Community Health Policies

Staff are required to be fully vaccinated against communicable disease unless medically unable, including being up to date on seasonal vaccinations within a reasonable time of becoming available to them. (We do not request or store proof, per the policy above.)

All guests, customers are, and youth are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless medically unable, are encouraged to be fully vaccinated, and must wear a mask unless proof of vaccination is provided. We provide free KF-94 masks.

Youth Recreation Campers are required to be vaccinated against communicable diseases where required by State, Local, and individual school policies, in addition to the above.

We have chosen to prioritize the safety of those who cannot be effectively vaccinated, and thus do not accept religious exemptions to these policies except where required by law. 

All Staff (employees and contractors) are required to remain home if they are likely to be contagious, and we provided unlimited paid sick leave to encourage good health and wellbeing for all of our community.

Staff Health Information Policy

It is our responsibility to ensure that our staff and community's health information is private to them, while protecting the health and safety of everyone involved in our community and present in our spaces.

We do not collect or keep any staff, community, customer, or youth health information, except as required by law or applicable regulation. We ask to see confirmation of COVID vaccination as a requirement to go unmasked, but do not track or store such information.

In practice this means we do not store any employee or contractor health information, do not see any guest health information other than confirmation of vaccination (which we do not store), and only collect or store such youth medical information as required by the NH Department of Health and Human Services as a licensed Youth Recreation Camp.
 

Transgender Policy

We consider it as naturally following from our values that marginalized people have human and civil rights, and that it's important that we support those rights and uplift marginalized people wherever possible. That includes respect for gender identity, gender presentation, and context-sensitive privacy concerns.

Transgender people are human beings. Transgender men are men. Transgender women are women. Nonbinary and other trans people's gender identity is their gender. All of these identities should be respected, treated with care, acknowledged positively, and not questioned, and we should be conscious of the struggles people that people who live with these identities can face in our society and strive to create equity wherever we see opportunities.

In practice, doing so includes the following actions (and more):

• Providing free name tags to allow everyone to present the name and pronouns they prefer to use on our space
• Encouraging staff and guests to wear such name tags to make space for the most marginalized people to feel comfortable doing so
• Using everyone's preferred name and pronouns, to the best of our knowledge
• Not requiring anyone to use their legal or given names, or the pronouns corresponding to their gender assigned at birth
• Avoiding violating anyone's privacy by outing their gender identity against their wishes, to the best of our knowledge
• Correcting misgendering or misnaming where appropriate and in line with the wishes of the person such speech is directed at, tot he best of our knowledge
• Discipline and consequences for intentional or persistent misgendering, misnaming, or other discriminatory behavior, ranging from verbal warnings to permanent banning from our spaces without refund or other compensation, or termination of employment

We encourage transgender people, including youth, to use any restrooms and privacy spaces that align with their gender and privacy preferences. Restrooms in our building are single occupancy and gender neutral, and we do not have locker rooms, changing rooms, swimming, or shower facilities.