Privacy Policy

Green Silicon Valley is a 501(c)(3) youth-led STEM nonprofit. We collect only what we need to run our programs, we never sell your data, and we never run ads. This page explains, in plain language, what we collect, why, and the choices you have. Many of the people we work with are students and minors, so we've written the student section to be clear about exactly how we handle their information.

What we collect

Information you give us. When you fill out a form on this site (request a workshop for a school, apply to teach, join with a workshop code, pitch a project, donate, subscribe to our newsletter, or contact us) we collect what you type in: typically your name, email, and depending on the form your phone number, age or grade, school, city and country, and a short description of you or your project.

Account and program data. If you join a program, we keep records needed to run it: which workshops or cohorts you're in, sessions you attend, hours you log, mentor pairings, project submissions, and messages you send on the platform.

Payment information. If you donate, our payment processor (Stripe) collects your card details directly. We never see or store your full card number. We do keep a record of the gift amount, date, and your contact details so we can send a receipt.

Basic technical data. Like most sites, we log standard request data (such as IP address, browser type, and pages viewed) and use a small amount of privacy-respecting analytics to understand how the site is used and fix what's broken. We do not use this to build advertising profiles.

How we use it

To run our programs: scheduling workshops, onboarding students and teachers, pairing mentors, reviewing pitch applications, tracking project grants, and keeping the learning platform working.

To communicate with you: answering your messages, sending program updates and the occasional newsletter (only if you opted in), and sending donation receipts and tax acknowledgments.

To keep people safe and improve: enforcing our Code of Conduct, preventing fraud and abuse, meeting our legal and reporting obligations, and making the site and programs better over time.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We do not share it for anyone else's advertising.

Students and minors

A lot of what we do is teenagers teaching and mentoring other teenagers, often across borders, so we take students' privacy seriously and collect the minimum needed to run the learning experience.

For students under the age of consent in their country, we expect a parent, guardian, or the partner school to be in the loop, and we collect parental or school consent where the law requires it before a minor joins a program.

We never ask students for more personal data than a program needs, and we keep student conversations on GSV's own channels rather than personal phone numbers or outside apps. A parent, guardian, or school can ask us to see, correct, or delete a student's information at any time using the contact below.

Who we share it with

We share data only with the service providers that help us operate (for example, our hosting and database provider, our payment processor for donations, and our email provider for newsletters and program messages), and only the data they need to do that job.

We may disclose information if the law requires it, or if it's necessary to protect someone's safety, but otherwise your information stays with us.

How we protect and keep it

We store data with reputable providers, restrict access to the small team that needs it, and keep information only as long as we need it to run our programs and meet legal and accounting requirements. When we no longer need it, we delete or anonymize it.

No system is perfectly secure, so we can't promise absolute security, but we work to protect your information and to fix problems quickly when we find them.

Your choices and contact

You can unsubscribe from our newsletter anytime using the link in any email, and you can ask us to show, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you (or about a student you're responsible for).

To make any of these requests, or if you have a question about your privacy, email greensiliconvalley27@gmail.com and we'll respond. If we ever make a meaningful change to this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page.