Charlie Care covers the 0 to 7 day window a counseling center cannot: the nights and weekends after a hard moment, before the next appointment. Students reach a trained volunteer in under a minute, anonymously, in the app or on the web.
It does not replace the counseling center, 988, or campus safety, and every screen says so. 988 comes first on every surface.
The Charlie Care app and web door. Anonymous chat with a trained volunteer, a safety plan they build and keep, optional check-ins at 24 hours, 3 days and 7 days, and one-tap delete of everything they said.
A student who says they are in immediate danger, or that they have a plan, is met instantly: popup, crisis lines, front of the queue.
Recruited on campus, through the counseling center and the psychology department. Apply, interview, train and take shifts on the platform that already runs today.
Every hour is logged to a printable certificate. Service hours are real currency for psych and social-work students, which is how a pilot staffs itself. Volunteers are 18 or over, always.
A live dashboard: conversations, measured first-response time, check-in completion. Aggregate only. No message content, no identities, by design.
That is the report an administration needs to fund a real deployment the following year.
A one-page MOU: who supervises, the escalation path to campus resources, what data the college sees, when the pilot ends. Insurance, clinical protocols, terms and privacy pages, and the volunteer background-check policy are all in place before any student sees a link.
8 to 12 student volunteers recruited, interviewed and trained. A campus clinician holds the supervisor seat with live oversight of the whole queue. Coverage target before launch: evenings, 7 days a week, two volunteers per shift.
The counseling center hands the link to students it already sees, as aftercare. No posters yet. Real numbers start counting here, and test data never counts as people served.
Orientation channels and posters with a QR to the door. Weekly numbers to the counseling center, a monthly summary to the Charlie Care board.
Conversations held, response times, check-in uptake, volunteer hours delivered, and the counseling center's honest read. Then the year-two decision.
MOU, insurance, clinical protocols, background checks.
Molly + counselUnder-18 freshmen: they are routed to Teen Line, the Trevor Project and 988, never to a Charlie Care volunteer, and the danger path never asks age. The MOU says so plainly.
CounselEscalation: one campus-safety number in the volunteer protocol.
Molly + collegeAn on-call supervisor named for every shift.
MollyWhether the college is named publicly. Default is no until they ask.
MollyAlmost nothing, on purpose. The platform as deployed is the pilot product. Three small additions when the pilot is signed: a campus entry link so pilot conversations are counted separately, this page shared with the college contact, and supervisor rights for the campus clinician if Molly delegates the promote gate.