Safeguarding, privacy & ethics
Safeguarding before scale.
Project 100,000 and Purpose Clubs involve children and young people. Their protection, privacy and agency are part of the architecture of everything we build—an operational control, not a paragraph.
Where these commitments stand. This page sets out OnPurpose Futures' commitments and proposed controls. Proposed policies and governance bodies require formal adoption and verification as operations develop. No activity involving minors proceeds until they are in place.
If a child is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services or the police first.
01 Children & young people
The ethical promise must be an operational control.
The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child defines children as people under 18 and requires that their best interests, views and protection are respected.1 Our programmes are designed around that standard.
Safeguarding before scale
Participation, media exposure, mentorship and data collection require child-protection controls from the beginning—before volume grows.
Agency over compliance
Young people ask their own questions and make informed decisions. We do not prescribe professions, politics, religions or identities.
Dignity & inclusion
No child is excluded on grounds of gender, disability, religion, ethnicity, family income, language or school enrolment.
Evidence before attribution
We report aggregated, non-identifying results and never publish a child's information to prove a point.
Non-negotiable safeguards
Applied before any activity with minors, in every country, by staff, volunteers and partners alike.
- A documented child-protection policy; staff and volunteer codes of conduct; mandatory onboarding and refresher training; school memoranda of understanding.
- Clear reporting, escalation, referral, response and non-retaliation procedures. Safeguarding incidents are never managed as public-relations issues.
- Appropriate caregiver consent, child assent, school permissions and the right to withdraw. Legal bases vary by country.
- No unsupervised adult–child contact. Verified mentors, group channels and monitored, school-mediated communication only.
- Media consent kept separate from programme participation. No publication of identifiable stories that expose vulnerability.
- An independent security assessment before any creator tools, uploads, recommendations or AI support go live.
- Age-appropriate complaint channels and periodic audits led by people not rewarded for scale targets.
Proposed governance
Proposed — to be formally constituted
- Programme steering board
- Strategy, fundraising integrity, risk appetite, cross-border compliance, audit and performance.
- Independent child protection & ethics committee
- Safeguarding policies, research reviews, high-risk features, whistleblowing and child rights.
- Youth advisory council
- Protected, representative input into curriculum, media norms, accessibility, reporting and product decisions.
- Country safeguarding leads
- Screening and background checks where available, safe recruitment, incident management and liaison with authorities.
- Education & research council
- Curriculum evidence, translations, age suitability, methods and independent evaluation.
- Finance & data assurance
- Segregation of duties, vendor due diligence, audit trail, cybersecurity and data privacy.
Data minimisation & storytelling
One accountable programme system—without building a surveillance system for children.
We will not
- Publish directories of participating children, clubs or exact school locations
- Routinely collect children's profiles, phone numbers, precise locations or private journals in a central database
- Ask for any child's personal information through this website
- Use photographs or video of young people without separate, documented consent
- Label sponsored students publicly by financial need
We will
- Report age and geography at an aggregate level only
- Use school-level pseudonymous counts and statistical overlap estimation where unique counts are needed
- Restrict safeguarding records to authorised roles, with retention set by legal advice
- Ensure youth records never automatically become public adult profiles
- Take country-by-country legal advice, including on Nigeria's Data Protection Act 20232
02 Red lines
Things we will not do, whatever the reason.
Culture Engineering means engineering supportive conditions for thoughtful, prosocial action—never obedience or predetermined beliefs. These lines hold for every programme, partner and product.
No covert persuasion.
No political or religious coercion.
No behavioural microtargeting of minors.
No monetisation of children's data.
No unmoderated adult–child direct messaging.
No growth strategy built on addiction, humiliation or fear.
The design test Would a guardian, teacher and child understand why content appears, who can see their contribution, how to leave, and where to report harm? If not, the feature is not ready.
03 Raise a concern
If something worries you, tell us.
You can raise a safeguarding concern about any OnPurpose Futures activity, staff member, volunteer or partner. Concerns are handled by the designated safeguarding lead, kept confidential and never met with retaliation.
- Designated safeguarding lead
- Name and role to be confirmed
- Safeguarding email
- Verified address to be supplied
- Telephone
- Verified number to be supplied
Please do not use this website's enquiry forms to report a safeguarding concern about a child. If a child is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first.
04 AI & the OnPurpose Guide
An assistant for adults, grounded in what we can stand behind.
The OnPurpose Guide helps visitors understand our work and find the right way to take part. These principles govern it now, and any AI we use in future.
Grounded in approved documents
It answers from OnPurpose Futures' approved materials and this website, and says so when it does not know.
Honest about status
It distinguishes current offers from programmes in development, plans and long-term ambitions, and never invents achievements, figures or partnerships.
Not a counsellor
It is designed for adult visitors. It does not act as a counsellor or personal adviser to children, and points anyone in distress toward a trusted adult or local services.
Human escalation
Anything beyond general information—a partnership, a school, a concern—is handed to a person through the right enquiry route.
No profiling
It does not build profiles of visitors or use conversations for advertising.
Higher bar for young people
Any future youth-facing AI requires an independent child-rights risk assessment, human escalation and country-level legal review, in line with UNICEF's guidance on AI and children.3
Who is responsible for your data
OnPurpose Futures is responsible for personal data submitted through this website. Registered legal entity, address and data protection contact to be supplied
What we collect, and why
When you submit a form—a partnership or general enquiry, a school expression of interest, a fellowship or volunteer application, or a newsletter sign-up—we collect the details you enter: typically your name, role, organisation, email address, country or region, and your message. We use them only to respond to you, to assess your application or enquiry, and, if you subscribed, to send occasional updates.
School forms must be completed by an authorised adult representative of the school. We do not ask for, and you should not provide, the names, ages, photographs or contact details of any child.
How forms work on this preview site
This website is a preview. Its forms behave in one of three ways, and the confirmation you see tells you which applies:
- Preview mode — nothing is sent or stored. Your answers are prepared on screen for you to copy and send yourself.
- Private preview inbox — when the site is viewed inside the Claude app by someone with permission, a submission may be saved to a private store readable only by the site's owner.
- Production — once a secure enquiry service is connected, submissions are sent to OnPurpose Futures over an encrypted connection.
Legal basis
We rely on your consent, given when you tick the consent box on a form, and on our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries about our work. Legal basis to be confirmed by legal counsel for each jurisdiction
Nigeria's Data Protection Act 2023 and the data protection laws of other countries where we operate may apply. We will take country-by-country legal advice before operating in each new jurisdiction.
How long we keep it
We keep enquiry data only as long as needed to respond and to manage any resulting relationship, and newsletter details until you unsubscribe. Specific retention periods to be set by legal advice
Who we share it with
We do not sell personal data or share it for advertising. We may use trusted service providers—for example, to host the website or receive form submissions—under contracts that protect your data. Processor list to be published when services are confirmed
Your browser, fonts and cookies
This website does not use advertising or tracking cookies and does not run third-party analytics. It may store small preferences in your browser's local storage—such as a remembered filter or an unsent draft. These never leave your device, and you can clear them in your browser settings.
Typefaces are loaded from Google Fonts, which means your browser requests font files from Google's servers. A production deployment can host these fonts directly to avoid this.
The OnPurpose Guide
Depending on how you are viewing the site, the Guide either searches OnPurpose Futures' approved documents inside your browser—nothing leaves your device—or sends your question, with relevant excerpts from approved documents, to an AI service to compose an answer. The Guide shows which mode it is using. Please do not share personal or sensitive information with it. Production AI provider and data terms to be named here before launch
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or restrict the use of your personal data, to object to its use, to withdraw consent at any time, and to complain to a data protection authority such as the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.
To make a request, contact us at verified privacy contact to be supplied.
Changes to this notice
We will update this notice as our services develop and show the version and date at the top. Material changes will be highlighted on this page.
We aim for this website to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. It has been designed and tested against that target; a formal independent audit has not yet been completed, so we describe its status as partially conformant.
What we have built in
- Full keyboard navigation, a skip link and a visible focus indicator
- A single, logical heading structure on every page
- Text alternatives for images, and text equivalents for every interactive diagram and chart (including table views)
- Evidence labels that use shape as well as colour
- Text contrast of at least 4.5:1 for body copy
- Respect for “reduced motion” settings: animations stop and diagrams show their final state
- Forms with visible labels, clear error messages and an error summary
- Layouts that work from small phones to large screens, and at 200% zoom
Known limitations
- Decorative generative graphics are hidden from assistive technology; they carry no information.
- Some complex diagrams are easier to use as their text equivalents on small screens.
- Answers from the OnPurpose Guide are generated or retrieved and may vary in structure.
- There is no video yet. Future video will be captioned and transcribed.
- Downloadable documents are not yet published in accessible formats.
Feedback
If you find something difficult to use, please tell us and we will respond and fix it where we can: accessibility contact to be supplied. You can also use the general enquiry form.