Privacy Policy — Mentorship Platform

1. Who we are

The Mentorship Program ("we", "us") is a long-term, multi-stage mentorship platform operated for UAE Nationals. Data is hosted in the AWS me-central-1 (Dubai) region.

2. What data we collect

Identity: name (English + optional Arabic), email, phone number, date of birth, gender, photograph (optional).
Profile: educational affiliation, field of study, year of graduation, current employer + role, bio / goals / achievements (free text), languages.
Mentorship activity: sessions logged, notes written by you or your mentor/mentee about you, milestones, goals, IDP entries, assessment scores.
Documents: CVs and other files you upload.
Operational: sign-in timestamps, IP address, browser user-agent, audit-log entries for actions you take.

3. Why we collect it

We collect the above to operate the mentorship program: matching you with a mentor or mentee, scheduling sessions, tracking your development plan, generating certificates, and auditing actions for security and dispute resolution. We do not sell your data and do not share it with third parties for advertising.

4. Where it lives

Personal data is stored in PostgreSQL hosted in AWS RDS, me-central-1 (Dubai). Uploaded files are stored in AWS S3 in the same region, behind private ACLs and accessed only via authenticated presigned URLs. Application servers run in Frankfurt (Vercel fra1) but no PII is persisted there.

5. How long we keep it

Active user data is retained for the duration of your enrolment in the program plus a 12-month grace period after departure for archival and dispute purposes. After that, your account is anonymized (display name replaced with an opaque identifier) and associated documents are deleted. Audit-log entries are retained for 7 years for regulatory compliance, but identifying fields in those rows are anonymized at the same time as your account.

6. Your rights

Under UAE PDPL and GDPR (where applicable), you can:

Access a copy of your personal data — request via Settings → Privacy.
Rectify inaccurate data — edit your profile, or contact program admins for fields you can't edit yourself.
Erase your account — request via the same Settings → Privacy page. Erasure cascades to mentee-authored content; mentor-authored notes about you are anonymized but retained for audit-log integrity.
Restrict processing — pause your participation by contacting program admins.
Withdraw consent — for any processing not required to operate the program.
Complain to the UAE Data Office or your local EU supervisory authority.

7. Cookies

We use strictly-necessary cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your role/locale preferences. We do not use analytics or marketing cookies today. See our Cookie Policy for the full list.

8. Security

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt (cost 12). Two-factor authentication is available; secrets are AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest. All traffic is TLS. The platform is regularly audited and patched against known vulnerabilities.

9. Children

The Program is intended for users aged 16 and older. If we discover an account belonging to a younger user, we will close the account and delete its data.

10. Contact

Questions or rights requests: contact your program administrator via the in-app support form, or email mentorshipae@gmail.com. We respond to verified rights requests within 30 days, as required by UAE PDPL Article 17.

11. Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be notified in-app at next sign-in. The "Last reviewed" date above shows the current version.