Your information, handled with care.
Sooma Circle is a small, curated community. We collect only what we need to review membership, keep the Circle safe, and share knowledge well. This page explains what we hold and how we use it.
Information Sooma may collect
Depending on how you take part, we may hold:
- Your name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Your current city and country
- The city and country you returned from, if you share it
- Where you are in your journey with Somalia
- Your membership request details, including your reason for joining and what you'd like to contribute
- Stories you submit
- Builder nominations you share
- Diaspora Notes
- Community recommendations
- Guide suggestions and topic requests
- Validation activity, such as confirming a recommendation still holds true
- Notes made by Circle Stewards while reviewing a request or contribution
- Basic technical information, such as simple analytics and usage events, to understand what is useful
How Sooma uses information
- To review membership requests
- To manage and support approved members
- To personalise your experience inside the Circle
- To keep the community safe
- To review, edit for clarity, and publish contributions
- To contact you about your request or your account
- To improve guides, recommendations, and shared community knowledge
- To protect the integrity and trust of the Circle
What may be public
Approved content may appear publicly on the site, or only to members, depending on the type of content. This can include:
- Published community recommendations
- Approved Diaspora Notes
- Published Builder teaser cards, with the fuller story reserved for members
- Published guides
- Selected member stories, shared with your consent
- Limited attribution, such as your first name and the city you returned from, where that feels right and you've allowed it
What stays private
Sooma Circle does not publicly display:
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Private contact details
- Steward and admin review notes
- Internal review fields
- Submissions that have not been published
- Declined membership requests
- Any private information shared during membership review
Sharing and service providers
Sooma Circle does not sell personal information.
We use trusted service providers to run the platform — hosting, database, email delivery, analytics, and security. They only handle information on our behalf.
We may share information if the law requires it, or if it is genuinely needed to protect the safety of the community.
Requests about your information
You can ask us at any time to:
- Correct something we hold
- Remove a detail from published content
- Delete your information
- Withdraw a submission, where that is still possible
- Answer a question about privacy
Write to us at hello@soomacircle.com and a Circle Steward will respond.