How we handle your data.

Who we are

Unseen Minority is a youth-led organisation based in Lusaka, Zambia. This policy covers both this website (unseenminorityzm.org) and our Member Portal (portal.unseenminorityzm.org), used by our volunteers, partners, staff, and board. For anything in this policy, write to hello@unseenminorityzm.org.

What we collect

We only collect what a given part of the site actually needs to work:

• Contact form (this website). Your name, email, organisation, role, and message, sent directly to our team.
• Member Portal accounts. If you apply to volunteer, partner, or join as staff, we hold your name, email, phone number, a short bio if you add one, your role, and, where relevant to a volunteer role, your safeguarding screening status.
• Portal activity. Hours logged, tasks assigned, messages sent within the portal, and opportunity sign-ups — all tied to your account so the right people (your team lead, our admins) can see and act on them.
• Donations. Box of Hope donations are processed entirely through Sonka. We do not collect or store any payment or Mobile Money details ourselves.

How we use it

We use what you give us only to run this website and the Member Portal for you — to respond to enquiries, manage your account, coordinate volunteering, and keep our records. We don't use it for anything beyond that, and we don't sell or rent it to anyone. It's stored and processed using trusted cloud service providers, the same kind of setup most small organisations rely on rather than running our own servers.

Children and vulnerable persons

Our Box of Hope and Shifting the Focus programmes work with children and survivors as beneficiaries. We do not collect personal data about beneficiary children or survivors through this website or the Member Portal. Any photos or stories we share publicly are used only with the consent of a parent, guardian, or the individual concerned. Volunteers in roles that involve contact with children or survivors go through safeguarding screening before they're placed, with no exceptions.

How long we keep it

We keep personal data for as long as it's actually needed for the purpose it was collected for. If you'd like your data reviewed or removed, write to us and we'll act on it.

Your rights

You can ask us what data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to hello@unseenminorityzm.org and we'll act on it.

Security

Access to Member Portal data is role-based: what a volunteer, team lead, or admin can see depends on what they actually need for their role. Passwords are never visible to us — signing in works the same way it does with most login systems, similar to signing in with Google.

Changes to this policy

We'll update this page as our practices change, and update the date at the top when we do.