Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

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Your Education Story (YES) is a non-profit with the mission of connecting the world through learning. You trust us with your information to serve this goal, and we take our responsibility seriously. We believe you should always know what data we collect from you, how we use it, and that you should have meaningful control over both. We want to empower users to make the best decisions about the information that they share with us.

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Our privacy policy is based on several core principles. These principles should not be considered a legal document — the full privacy policy below is — but they are what underlie the privacy policy.

 

1. Transparency and Choice: We tell you what data we collect, why we collect it, and how it’s used, retained, and shared with others. We are transparent about our practices so that you can make meaningful choices about how your personal information is used. If we make a material change, we will provide prominent notice by posting a notice on our service or this website page and/or we will notify you by email (if you have provided an email address to us).

 

2. Personal Information We Collect: Please see below where we detail the personal information, we collect from each user type, including the sources from which the information was collected, the business purpose for which the information was collected, and the third parties with whom we share or disclose personal information for a business purpose.

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3. How We Use the Information We Collect: We use the personal information we collect from learners (or about learners from our volunteers) to provide and improve the Service, for educational purposes, security, and safety purposes, or as allowed by law. We will not require learners to provide more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in the Service.

 

4. We Never Sell Personal Information: We will never sell or rent your personal information or non-personal information. Our mission is to help you learn, not sell your personal data as a product. We will only share or disclose personal information as set forth in the Privacy Policy, such as with a limited set of third-party service providers necessary to provide or develop our Services (such as database hosting) or as required by law, and we will be transparent about who these service providers are. We will contractually require that these service providers process personal information in accordance with our instructions and consistent with this Privacy Policy. We ensure that these service providers employ reasonable and comprehensive data protection and security protocols. See here for more details.

 

5. We Never Use Learner Information for Behaviourally Targeted or Third-Party Advertising: Information collected from learners (including personal information and information collected automatically) is never used or disclosed for third-party advertising. We also do not place any third-party advertisements in learner logged-in areas of the Service. Additionally, personal information collected from learners is never used for behaviourally-targeted advertising to learners by us or any third-party. We may present contextually relevant educational content (not using learner personal information) for either our own products or third-party products and services ourselves that we believe may be of interest to a learner.

 

6. Additionally, as a non-profit, we are sustained through philanthropy and may have paid content partnerships with universities and other third parties. We will only enter partnerships that help us support learners and volunteers as part of our educational mission. Sponsored content will always be labelled (e.g., “Sponsored by _”). We will not share any of your personal information with these sponsors without your explicit consent, and these sponsors do not have the ability to track or collect data about our site visitors or users.

 

7. Data Retention: We will not retain learner personal information for any longer than is necessary for educational purposes and legal obligations, or to provide the Service for which we receive or collect the learner personal information.

 

8. You Own Your Personal Information: We don’t own any personal information you provide, or we receive — you (learners, volunteers or any participants) will own your personal information.

 

9. Right to Access, Correction, and Deletion of Data: You can access, correct and delete your personal information. See here for more information on all user’s rights, including about your additional rights of data portability and right to object or withdraw consent.

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Session Content Policy

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In addition to our terms and conditions, we have specific content policies that volunteers must follow when creating sessions. These policies are intended to support YES’s mission of connecting the world through learning, while fostering a safe and inclusive learning environment.

Academic advisors of YES are given agency and freedom to be creative with their sessions. However, in order to ensure we stay true to this mission, across ages and cultures, it is important that such creativity stay within certain bounds. The policies below describe those bounds.

As the platform grows, these policies will continue to evolve. YES encourage academic advisors to check back here frequently when creating new sessions, and to continue to use their best judgement when hosting sessions.

1. Sessions cannot endanger or compromise the well-being of learners, whether intended or not. This includes both physical and mental health, as well as financial outcomes.

2. Sessions cannot exclude learners, or divide learners based on their beliefs.

3. Academic advisors and learners cannot share information whose accuracy is questioned by experts. While there is no universally accepted standard for “truth”, moderators will decide if there is sufficient uncertainty surrounding a topic to merit removing a session.

4. Academic advisors and learners cannot share opinions or advice that are not grounded in experience. Such advice would be counterproductive to one’s learning.

5. Sessions need to be appropriate for kids as young as age 13. This means no profanity, nudity, violence, etc.

6. Sessions should be placed in the appropriate topic on the website. If no appropriate topic exists, then the session should not be hosted.

7. Sessions cannot violate copyright laws. Academic advisors should limit the use of third-party, copyrighted material.

8. Sessions must have a learning and/or educational focus.