The Kumi Empowerment Foundation (“we”, “us”) respects your privacy. This policy explains what information we collect through kumiempowerment.org, why we collect it, and how we protect it.
Information we collect
- Scholarship applications: your email address, contact details, date of birth, region, university and program, academic record, financial circumstances, personal statement, and the documents you upload.
- Messages and sign-ups: the name, email address, organization and message you send through our contact, volunteer, partnership, giving-interest and notification forms.
- Website usage: anonymous, aggregated page-view statistics. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.
How we use it
We use application information only to assess eligibility, select scholarship recipients, communicate with applicants, administer awards (including paying tuition directly to universities), and meet our legal and reporting obligations. We use messages only to reply and to keep you informed when you ask us to.
Who can see it
Applications are visible only to authorized members of our review team. Every reviewer signs in with a password and an authenticator app, and every view, download and decision is recorded in an audit log. We never sell your information. We share it with a university only when needed to verify enrollment or arrange a tuition payment.
How we protect it
Information is encrypted in transit. Application records are stored in a secured database, and uploaded documents are stored in private cloud storage with no public addresses; reviewers open them through links that expire within minutes. Our service providers include Supabase (database and application server), Cloudflare (file storage and bot protection), ZeptoMail (email), Vercel (website hosting) GitHub (encrypted recovery backups) and Sentry (technical error monitoring). Backup archives are encrypted before they are uploaded; the recovery key is kept separately.
Security verification
We use Cloudflare Turnstile on public forms and sign-in code requests to help prevent automated abuse. Cloudflare processes technical browser and connection information to perform this verification. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
Cookies
We set one essential cookie when you sign in to the application portal, so your answers stay connected to you. It expires after seven days and is not used for tracking.
How long we keep it
We keep application information for as long as needed to administer the scholarship cycle, support recipients and meet our record-keeping obligations. You may ask us to delete your application at any time, and we will do so unless we are required to keep it. Encrypted recovery copies may retain deleted information until their seven-day backup retention period ends.
Your choices
You may ask to see, correct or delete the information we hold about you, or unsubscribe from updates, by writing to info@kumiempowerment.org.
Changes
We will post any changes to this policy on this page with a new date at the top.