SAFEGUARDING
Rules we hold ourselves to in a village
Last updated 17 August 2026
We work with women, young people and children, in places where our name arrives before we do and stays after we leave. So these are written down, and they apply to our staff, our trainers, our volunteers and every partner organisation delivering a batch with us.
Nobody pays to take part
No fee for a seat, a certificate, a bank account, a placement or a “registration”. No trainer, mobiliser, partner or person carrying our name may take money from a participant, or a gift, or a favour, for anything. If someone asks you for money, that is the complaint we most want to hear.
Children and young people
- No member of our team meets a child alone, out of sight of a teacher, a guardian or another adult from the team.
- We work through the school, the college or the guardian, never around them.
- No photograph, name, school or village of a child is published in a way that would let a stranger identify or find them.
- A guardian's consent is taken before any photograph of a child is used, and it can be withdrawn later.
- Anything that looks like harm to a child is reported to the authorities under the law, and we do not first weigh what it does to our reputation.
Women's safety
Our programs are built for women to attend — batch timings, venues and travel are chosen with that in mind, and a woman from the team is present where the batch is women only.
Sexual harassment at work is dealt with under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. A complaint may be made to us through the contact page, or taken directly to the Local Committee of your District Officer. A complaint may always be taken to the Local Committee directly.
Conduct
Everyone working under our name is expected to: use no caste, religious or gendered slur; take no side in a village dispute; make no promise of a job, loan or subsidy that the scheme does not actually offer; drink nothing at a program site; and leave the place as it was found.
Breaking these ends the engagement. There is no version of this where good delivery numbers cover for it.
Photographs and stories
We ask before we photograph, in the person's language, and explain where the picture will go. We do not photograph anyone mid-transaction, mid-treatment or in distress, do not stage poverty for a camera, and do not publish a person's story with details that expose them at home. Consent can be withdrawn at any time — say so and the image comes off our channels.
Information about participants
What we collect, why, and who sees it is in the privacy policy. The short version: only what the scheme needs, only for that purpose, never sold, never handed to a lender or a marketer.
How to raise something
Anyone — a participant, a parent, a partner, a member of our team, a stranger who saw something — can raise a complaint, and nothing bad happens to the person who raises it.
Write or call through the contact page. In Hindi or English, in whatever form is easiest — a message on any of our social accounts reaches the same people.
What happens then
- We acknowledge it within 7 days and tell you who is looking into it.
- We say what we found and what we are doing about it within 30 days.
- Anything involving a child, safety, money or harassment goes to the Board — and, where the law requires, to the police or the District Officer — immediately, not after an internal view has been formed.
- Where you asked to stay anonymous, we keep you anonymous.
If our answer is not good enough, take it to the Board — reachable through the contact page, and to the department running the scheme, the Local Committee of the District Officer for a harassment complaint, or the police where an offence has been committed. We will not stand in the way of any of those, and we will hand over what we have.
When this changes
These rules will get longer as the work does. The date at the top moves when they do.