Legal

Privacy Policy.

What personal information we collect, why, and the choices and rights you have — including special protections for children.

Effective date: July 14, 2026

25 Bridges ("25 Bridges," "we," "us," or "our") operates 25bridges.org and the associated student registration and management system (together, the "Site"). This policy explains what personal information we collect from students, parents/guardians, teachers, aides, and guests, why we collect it, and the choices and rights you have. We are based in Maryland, USA, and this policy is written under U.S. law and norms.

If you are a parent or guardian of a student, please read Section 5 carefully — it explains your rights and our obligations regarding your child's information under U.S. federal law.

1. Who This Policy Covers

This policy applies to anyone whose information we collect through the Site, including:

  • Students — children and young adults enrolled in or registering for our program.
  • Parents/guardians acting on a student's behalf.
  • Teachers and aides who help run or support classes.
  • Guests — one-off visitors or observers who join a class session.

2. Information We Collect

Depending on your role, we may collect:

  • Name, and optionally a name in Burmese (Myanmar script) and an English nickname
  • Email address and/or phone number
  • Camp, and location details (town, region, country)
  • Date of birth
  • School, ambition, and other interests (all optional)
  • Class attendance records (including data derived from Zoom participant logs)
  • Duolingo level/progress, dated over time
  • Any notes our staff or volunteers keep to support a student's educational, wellbeing, or pastoral needs

We only collect what helps us run the program, support students, and keep accurate records — we do not collect information for advertising or profiling purposes, and we never sell personal information.

3. Why We Collect and Use This Information

We use the information above to:

  • Manage students' educational, wellbeing, and pastoral needs — this is the core purpose of the database, and includes things like tracking attendance, following a student's language-learning progress, and noting anything our teachers or aides need to be aware of to support a student well.
  • Organize and run classes, and know who is participating (students, teachers, aides, guests).
  • Communicate with registered users — for example, to notify you of changes to this policy (see Section 11) or matters relevant to the program.
  • Report on the program, in aggregate or de-identified form where possible, to our board, donors, or partner organizations.

4. How We Share Information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not make it available to third parties for their own marketing or commercial use. The only outside parties who ever see personal information are:

  • Contractors and service providers who help us run the Site and database (for example, our hosting and database provider). These parties are only given the access they need to do that job, and are not permitted to use the information for any other purpose.
  • Where required by law — for example, in response to a valid court order, subpoena, or to protect the safety of a student or others.

We do not otherwise disclose personal information to any third party without consent.

5. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

Many of our students are under 13 years old. We comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC's COPPA Rule, including the amendments that took effect in 2025.

  • Parental consent. Our form asks any registrant under 13 to name the parent/guardian who gave them permission, and we attempt to confirm permission.
  • No further disclosure without added consent. If we ever need to share a child's information with a party beyond the contractors described in Section 4, we will seek separate, additional verifiable parental consent first — a general consent to registration does not cover that.
  • Retention. We keep children's personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to support their participation in the program and the purposes in Section 3 — not indefinitely. When a student leaves the program permanently, or a parent asks us to, we delete or de-identify their record within a reasonable period.
  • No behavioral advertising or tracking. We do not use children's information for targeted advertising, and we do not track children across other websites or apps.
  • Parental rights. At any time, a parent or guardian may:
    • Review the personal information we hold about their child;
    • Ask us to correct or delete it;
    • Withdraw consent and have the child's account deactivated (this does not affect any offline participation in the program).

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at president.chai22@gmail.com.

6. Teachers, Aides, and Guests

Adults registering as teachers, aides, or guests are providing their own information directly, and by registering, agree to this policy. The same principles in Sections 3 and 4 apply — we use this information to run the program and never sell or share it beyond the contractors described above.

7. Data Security

We restrict access to personal information to authorized administrators, and our database and admin tools require a login — records are never publicly listed or searchable. We use industry-standard safeguards (such as encrypted connections) to protect information in transit and at rest, though no system can be guaranteed 100% secure.

8. Data Retention

We keep personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy. We periodically review records and remove or de-identify information that is no longer needed — for example, when a student, teacher, aide, or guest is no longer associated with the program and there is no ongoing reason (such as legal or reporting requirements) to retain their record.

9. U.S. State Privacy Law Notice

25 Bridges is a nonprofit organization. Many comprehensive state privacy laws — including California's CCPA/CPRA — apply only to for-profit businesses and do not cover nonprofits like us.

Maryland's Online Data Privacy Act (MODPA) is unusual in that it applies to some nonprofits, but only once an organization processes the personal data of at least 35,000 Maryland consumers a year (or 10,000, if 20% or more of revenue comes from selling personal data). We fall well below this threshold. If our program grows to a scale where MODPA applies, we will update this policy accordingly.

Regardless of whether a specific law applies to us, we extend the core rights described in Sections 5 and 10 (access, correction, deletion) to everyone who registers with us, not just where legally required.

10. International Users and the UK

We do not currently operate in, or knowingly collect information from, individuals located in continental Europe, so the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) does not apply to us today.

Some students, teachers, or aides may in future be based in the United Kingdom. If that happens, UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 may apply to that information. In that case, in addition to the rights described elsewhere in this policy, UK-based individuals (or their parent/guardian) would also have the right to:

  • Access the personal information we hold about them;
  • Have inaccurate information corrected;
  • Request erasure of their information;
  • Restrict or object to certain processing;
  • Request a copy of their information in a portable format;
  • Lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

We will process any such request in line with UK GDPR if and when we have UK-based users, and will update this section with more specific detail (including our lawful basis for processing and any required UK representative) before that becomes relevant.

11. Changes to This Policy

If we make a material change to this policy, we will notify everyone who has registered with us and provided an email address, by email, before or at the same time the change takes effect — not just by posting an update to the Site. The "Effective date" at the top of this policy will always reflect the most recent version.

12. Contact Us

Questions, requests, or concerns about this policy or your (or your child's) information can be sent to:

President, 25 Bridges
president.chai22@gmail.com