Initiative for Development Education and Learning (“IDEaL”, “we”, “us” or “our”) respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect when you use our website and services, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have. It applies to our website, user accounts, training and programme enrollment, events, the IDEaL Store, free resources, Partner With Us, our Gallery and media, our newsletter, and any contact you make with us.
We process personal data in line with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (“NDPA”) and the regulations and directives issued by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (“NDPC”), including the General Application and Implementation Directive 2025 (“GAID”). Where we offer services to people in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we also respect their rights under the GDPR and UK GDPR.
In summary
- We collect only what we need to provide our services, and we never sell your personal data.
- We do not collect or store card details on this website. Payments are made by bank transfer.
- We do not use analytics or advertising cookies. Videos, podcasts and maps from other providers load only if you allow them.
- We send marketing only if you opt in, and you can opt out at any time.
- Users under 18 need a parent or guardian's consent, and children under 13 cannot hold an account.
- You can ask to access, correct or delete your data by emailing support@ideal-nig.org.
1. Who we are
Initiative for Development Education and Learning (IDEaL) is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed. We are based in Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria. Our contact details are in section 15.
Questions about this policy or about how we handle your personal data can be sent to our data protection contact at support@ideal-nig.org.
2. Information we collect
We collect personal data in three ways: from you directly, automatically when you use our website, and from third parties you choose to use.
Information you give us
| When you… | We collect |
|---|---|
| Create an account | Your name, email address and password (stored only in encrypted, hashed form), your age confirmation, your parent or guardian’s name and email and their approval decision if you are under 18, and a record of the terms you accepted. |
| Apply for a training, testing or other programme | Your contact details (name, email, phone number, address), programme choices, preferred start date, experience level, learning goals, preferred language and communication method, how you heard about us, any special requirements you tell us about, and documents you upload such as a profile photo, an identification document or a payment receipt. |
| Register for or enquire about an event | Your name, email, phone number, organisation, any message you send, your marketing preference and, for paid events, a payment receipt. |
| Order from or enquire in our store | Your name, contact details, the products you ordered or asked about, your WhatsApp number (optional), your questions, order and delivery records, and any payment receipt you upload. |
| Claim a free resource | Which resource you claimed and when, and each time you open its access link from your dashboard. Providers may use this to recognise IDEaL referrals; we do not send them your details. |
| Partner with us or support our work | Your name, organisation, email, phone number, the type of support you are interested in and your message. If you make a contribution, we keep a record of it (amount or description, date and your preference for public acknowledgement). We also keep records of donations made through our earlier donations feature. |
| Subscribe to our newsletter | Your email address and name, the date and the page where you subscribed, and your IP address and browser details at the time, which we keep as evidence of your consent. |
| Send feedback, contact us or message us from your dashboard | Your name, email, phone number, the content of your messages and any attachments you send. |
| Use your dashboard | Your orders, enrollments, registrations, claimed resources and saved favourites. |
| Share a testimonial | Your name, role or organisation (optional), photo and the words of your testimonial. We publish these only with your permission. |
| Take part in our programmes and events | Photographs and video in which you may appear, which we may publish in our Gallery and on social media (see section 5 and our Terms of Service). |
Information collected automatically
- Technical information such as your IP address, browser type, device type and operating system, collected by our hosting provider in server logs for security and reliability.
- Security signals used by our bot-protection service (Cloudflare Turnstile) to confirm that form submissions come from real people.
- Information stored in your browser that the website needs in order to work, such as your sign-in session, your shopping cart and your cookie choices (see section 12).
- Error reports: if a page fails, our error-monitoring service (Sentry) records technical details of the error, such as the page, browser and time. It is configured not to collect names, email addresses or form contents, and does not record your screen.
- Anonymous view counts for articles, events and listings. These are counted without identifying you.
We do not use analytics or advertising trackers on this website, and we do not sell or rent personal data.
Information from third parties
If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name, email address and profile picture with us. We do not receive your Google password. We may also receive information from training or examination partners about your progress or results where this is part of a programme you enrolled in.
3. How we use your information and our lawful bases
We may process personal data only where we have a lawful basis under the NDPA (and, where relevant, the GDPR). The table below explains what we use your information for and the lawful basis we rely on.
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and managing your account, verifying your email address and keeping you signed in | Performance of a contract with you |
| Processing enrollments, event registrations, store orders and enquiries, and delivering products and services to you | Performance of a contract with you, or steps you asked us to take before entering into one |
| Confirming payments made by bank transfer and keeping financial and donation records | Legal obligation (accounting and tax) and performance of a contract |
| Responding to your enquiries, feedback and requests | Legitimate interests (running our organisation and helping you), or contract where it relates to a service |
| Sending service messages such as confirmations, delivery updates and important changes | Performance of a contract |
| Sending newsletters, event announcements and other marketing | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Asking every new user to confirm their age, and obtaining a parent or guardian’s approval for users under 18 | Legal obligation and consent |
| Protecting our website and users from fraud, spam, bots and misuse | Legitimate interests |
| Improving our programmes and services using feedback and aggregated information | Legitimate interests |
| Publishing testimonials | Consent |
| Photographing and filming our programmes and events, and publishing images in our Gallery and on social media to report on our work | Legitimate interests; for identifiable images of children, the consent of a parent or guardian |
| Recording free resource claims and keeping evidence of newsletter and cookie consent | Performance of a contract, legitimate interests, and our legal obligation to be able to demonstrate consent |
| Managing partnership enquiries and contributions, and acknowledging contributors who agree | Legitimate interests, contract where a partnership is agreed, and consent for public acknowledgement |
| Detecting and fixing errors on the website | Legitimate interests |
| Complying with the law, responding to lawful requests from authorities, and establishing or defending legal claims | Legal obligation and legitimate interests |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered our interests against your rights and freedoms, and you can object at any time (see section 11). We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing, including profiling, that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
4. Sensitive personal data
We do not ask for sensitive personal data such as information about your health, religion, ethnicity or biometric data. However, you may choose to tell us about a disability or health need so that we can support you (for example in the “special requirements” field of an enrollment). If you do, we use it only to make reasonable arrangements for you, on the basis of your explicit consent. We restrict access to it and delete it when it is no longer needed.
Identification documents are requested only where a programme or examination requires identity verification. Please upload only the documents we ask for.
5. Children and age requirements
Under the NDPA, anyone under 18 is a child, and processing a child's personal data requires the consent of a parent or legal guardian. We therefore apply the following rules:
- 18 and over: you may create an account and use our services yourself.
- 13 to 17: you may create an account only with your parent or guardian's consent. When you sign up, you must give your parent or guardian's name and email address. We email them a link to review the account and approve or decline it. The account cannot be used until they approve it. If they decline, we delete the account and its data.
- Under 13: children may not create an account. A parent, guardian or school may register a child for a programme or event on the child's behalf by contacting us.
A parent or guardian may contact us at any time to review, correct or delete their child's personal data, or to withdraw their consent. If we learn that we hold personal data about a child without the required consent, we will delete it or obtain the consent promptly. We do not send marketing to users we know to be under 18without their parent or guardian's consent.
We do not publish identifiable photographs or videos of children in our Gallery or on social media without the consent of a parent or guardian, and we never publish a child's full name with their image. A parent or guardian can ask us to remove an image of their child at any time (see section 11).
6. Marketing communications
We send you news, event announcements and information about programmes only if you have opted in, for example by ticking the optional marketing box on a form. That box is never ticked for you. You can unsubscribe at any time by using the link in our emails or by contacting us. Withdrawing consent does not affect service messages about your account, orders or enrollments.
8. International transfers
Some of our service providers (including Sanity, Vercel, Google, Cloudflare and Sentry) store or process data on servers outside Nigeria, for example in the United States or the European Union. When personal data is transferred outside Nigeria, we rely on the safeguards permitted by Part VIII of the NDPA. These include transfers to countries with adequate data protection, standard contractual clauses and other binding commitments from our providers, or, where appropriate, your consent. You can contact us for more information about these safeguards.
9. How long we keep your information
We keep personal data only for as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, and then delete or anonymise it securely.
| Information | Retention period |
|---|---|
| Account information | While your account is open. We delete or anonymise it within 30 days after you ask us to close your account, except for records we must keep by law. |
| Enrollment applications and uploaded documents (including identification documents) | For the duration of the programme and up to 2 years afterwards, or up to 2 years after an application is declined or withdrawn |
| Event registrations and enquiries | Up to 2 years after the event |
| Store enquiries, feedback and general correspondence | Up to 2 years after our last contact with you |
| Orders, payment receipts, contribution and donation records | Up to 6 years, as required for accounting and tax purposes |
| Free resource claim records | Up to 2 years after the claim |
| Partnership enquiries and messages sent from your dashboard | Up to 2 years after our last contact with you |
| Newsletter subscription and consent evidence | While you are subscribed, and for up to 2 years after you unsubscribe so that we can show we respected your choice |
| Photographs and videos in our Gallery | For as long as they are useful for reporting on our work, or until you ask us to remove them |
| Marketing preferences | Until you withdraw consent. We keep a record of the withdrawal so that we respect it. |
| Security and server logs | Up to 12 months |
We may keep information for longer if the law requires it, or if we need it to resolve a dispute or deal with a legal claim.
10. How we protect your information
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including:
- Encrypted connections (HTTPS) for all traffic to our website
- Passwords stored only in hashed form. Our staff can never see your password.
- Access to records restricted to authorised staff with administrator accounts, on a need-to-know basis
- Email verification for new accounts, and bot protection on our public forms
- Reputable service providers with strong security practices
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to put your rights and freedoms at risk, we will notify the NDPC within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, as the NDPA requires. Where the breach is likely to result in a high risk to you, we will also tell you without undue delay, with advice on steps you can take.
11. Your rights
Under the NDPA (and the GDPR, where it applies), you have the right to:
- Be informed about how we use your personal data, as set out in this policy
- Access the personal data we hold about you and receive a copy of it
- Rectification: have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected
- Erasure: have your data deleted where there is no good reason for us to keep it
- Restrict how we use your data in certain circumstances
- Object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time
- Data portability: receive your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or have it sent to another organisation
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent (this does not affect processing that has already taken place)
- Not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that significantly affect you
- Ask us to remove a photograph or video of you (or of your child) from our Gallery or other channels we control
To exercise any of these rights, email support@ideal-nig.org. We may need to verify your identity before acting on your request. We will respond within 30 days. If a request is complex, we may extend this and will tell you why. Exercising your rights is free, unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.
13. Third-party websites and content
Our website links to, and embeds content from, other websites. Examples include online learning providers listed in our store, YouTube videos and podcast players. We are not responsible for their privacy practices. When you follow such a link or play embedded content, the other website's privacy policy applies, and we encourage you to read it.
14. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy to reflect changes in our services or the law. We will post the updated version on this page and change the “Last Updated” date. If the changes are significant, we will also notify you by email or on the website before they take effect, and where the law requires it, we will ask for your consent again.
Policy version: 2026-10-15
15. Contact us and complaints
If you have a question or concern about this policy or how we handle your personal data, please contact us first. We will do our best to resolve it.
Initiative for Development Education and Learning (IDEaL): Data Protection Contact
37, Jesus Saves Road (near Presidential Lodge), off Summit Road
Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria
Email: support@ideal-nig.org
Phone: 08030493091, 09065282238
If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) at ndpc.gov.ng. If you live in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you may also complain to your local data protection authority.
See also our Terms of Service, Cookie Policy and Refund & Cancellation Policy.