Privacy Policy

Who this is about

Anandham Youth Foundation is a charitable foundation in Tamil Nadu, India. We give scholarships and support to students in higher education. This policy covers the Anandham One mobile application and the staff website at app.anandham.org.

It describes the information we hold about the students we support, why we hold it, and what we do to keep it safe.

What we collect

Almost everything here is given to us by the student, or by the office on their behalf, when they apply for or receive support.

About the student. Name, Anandham ID, date of birth, gender, community, mobile number, email address, home address and district, and whether they are the first in their family to attend college.

Government identifiers. Aadhaar number, where the student has given it.

Bank details. Account number, IFSC code, bank name and branch — used only to pay fees and support on the student's behalf.

Family. Parents' names, occupations and monthly income, guardian name and contact number, and siblings' details. For students who are under 18, this includes their guardian's contact details.

Education. School and college names, course and year, semester marks, arrears, and scanned or photographed marksheets.

Health and disability. Whether the student has a disability, and its nature, where they have told us.

Money. Fee requests, approvals, payments made, and receipts uploaded.

Attendance. Attendance at foundation sessions and workshops.

Technical. When you sign in, and a device identifier used only to send you notifications. We do not use tracking or advertising identifiers, and there is no advertising in this application.

Why we collect it

• To decide who we can support, and how much
• To pay college fees, hostel fees and other approved costs
• To follow a student's academic progress
• To contact the student, or their guardian where they are a minor
• To keep the financial records a charitable foundation is required to keep

We do not sell this information, use it for advertising, or share it for anyone else's marketing.

Students under 18

Some of the students we support are under 18 when they join. For those students:

• A parent or guardian gives their information to us and consents to it being held, as part of the application to the foundation
• We hold the guardian's name and contact number so the office can reach an adult responsible for the student
• A guardian may ask us at any time to show them, correct, or stop using their child's information, using the contact below

The application shows a student only their own record. It contains no advertising, no social features, no chat with other users, and no content from outside the foundation.

Who can see it

Each member of staff has a role, and the role decides what they can reach. This is enforced on our server on every request — not by hiding buttons on a screen.

Super Admin, Admin

everything, and can create staff accounts

Back Office

student records, marksheets and attendance

Finance L1

fee requests, payments and receipts

Finance L2

second approval, and sponsor-funded fees

Personal Motivator

only the students assigned to them

A student can see only their own record. They cannot see any other student's information at any time.

Who we share it with

We share the minimum necessary, and only with:

• Colleges and hostels — the student's name, Anandham ID and course, so a fee payment can be matched to them
• Banks — account details, to make that payment
• Sponsors who fund a particular student — their name, college and course. Never Aadhaar or bank details
• Amazon Web Services, who host our server and store our documents, in India
• Google, whose service delivers notifications to the phone. The notification carries a short message only
• Government or a court, where the law requires it

Where it is kept, and how it is protected

• In India. Our server and document storage are in Amazon's Mumbai region. Data is not moved outside India.
• Encrypted in transit. Everything between a phone or browser and our server travels over HTTPS.
• Aadhaar, bank account and IFSC are encrypted where they are stored, so they are unreadable even to someone who obtained a copy of the database.
• Passwords are never stored. We keep only a one-way scramble, so nobody — including us — can read or recover a password. A forgotten password can only be reset.
• The database is not reachable from the internet. Only the application can reach it.
• Every action is recorded — who did what, and when.

No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If information is ever exposed, we will tell the students affected and the appropriate authority without delay.

How long we keep it

We keep a student's record for as long as we support them, and afterwards as part of the foundation's permanent record of who it has helped. Financial records — fee requests, payments and receipts — are kept as long as charity and tax law requires.

We do not delete accounts when someone stops using the application, because doing so would break the financial history attached to them. An account that is no longer needed is switched off instead: it can no longer sign in, and the record it belongs to stays intact.

Your rights

A student, or the guardian of a student under 18, may ask us to:

• Show them everything we hold about them
• Correct anything that is wrong
• Delete their account and their personal information
• Stop sending them notifications

Write to us at the address below and we will reply within 30 days. If we cannot delete something — because the law requires us to keep a financial record — we will tell you exactly what we are keeping and why, and delete the rest.

Notifications

The application asks your permission before sending notifications. They tell you about your own fee requests, marks and tasks. You can switch them off at any time in your phone's settings, and the application will keep working.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we use information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Where a change is significant, we will tell students in the application.

Contact us

For anything in this policy — including a request to see, correct or delete your information: