1. User Agreement
These Terms of Use are an agreement between you and Voices of Youth (VOY) that set the rules for your interactions with our site. VOY is the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) online place for young people to learn more about issues affecting their world.
Please read these Terms of Use carefully. By using this site, you agree that you have read, understood, and accepted the terms and conditions contained below. If you do not agree to any of these terms and conditions, please do not use this site.
VOY is targeted at empowering young people from ages 13 and older to express themselves. If you are under 16 years old, we encourage you to discuss your use and engagement on this site with your parents or guardians and make sure that they consent to your use of this site.
These Terms of Use are subject to change, so please make sure you check out this page from time to time. The date of the most recent revisions will appear at the bottom of this page. If you continue to use this site, this means that you accept any changes to or revisions of these Terms of Use.
Your privacy is very important to us – please also read our Privacy Policy, which will walk you through how VOY collects, stores, and uses the information that you provide to us. By using this site, you are confirming to us that you are agreeing to our Privacy Policy.
2. Account Creation and Security
In order to submit content on this site, you will need to register with VOY and create an account. Creating an account is optional, but doing so will allow you to participate on the site more actively – you’ll be able to submit blogs and participate in forums, for example. If you choose to create an account, you will be asked to provide certain personal information about you, such as your display name, e-mail address, date of birth, country, and gender.
You can also create a VOY account through your Facebook or Twitter account. To do this, click on the relevant icon and follow the steps. You will have to login into your Facebook/Twitter account and grant permission for VOY to access certain information you have shared with Facebook/Twitter – such as your email address, your name and your profile photo. Once you create your account you can edit it and choose a different display name or profile picture.
To see how we handle your personal information, please see our Privacy Policy.
We encourage you to select a display name that does not disclose your real name or other information that could identify you – especially if you are under the age of 18.
You are responsible for keeping your password secret and your account secure. You are responsible for all uses of your account, even if your account is used by someone else. If VOY determines that your use of your account violates the Terms of Use, we may decide to suspend or delete your account. You may not use another person’s VOY account without permission.
If you have any reason to believe that your account is no longer secure – if your password has been stolen, for instance – you should change your password as soon as possible. If you cannot access your account to change your password, notify us at [email protected].
3. Rules of Usage
VOY is a community that is open to and welcomes young people from around the world. Due to the diversity of our users, VOY aims to create an environment where any young person feels comfortable, no matter their nationality, gender, cultural background, religion, sexual orientation or political conviction.
VOY’s core values are positivity, openness, respect, inclusiveness, dialogue, collaboration and constructiveness.
VOY encourages the expression by young people on a wide variety of topics, and recognizes that politics and policy are an important part of the global conversation. We believe that attacks, insults, and political polemics do not foster tolerance or support an inclusive community of ideas.
Accordingly, VOY is not intended for partisan politics, nor for extremist or inflammatory positions. You should not make allegations against, advocate for, nor belittle or insult parties, party platforms and political leaders. Additionally, many countries have specific restrictions for political content, and you’re responsible for complying with them.
Among other prohibited categories, you may not use this site in any way to:
- Promote bigotry, discrimination, hatred or violence against any person or group;
- Threaten, harasses or intimidate any other person, whether that person is a VOY user or not;
- Use foul language or personal attacks;
- Use sexually explicit or other graphically violent material;
- Engage in dishonest or deceptive behavior;
- Imitate, impersonate or pretend to be somebody else;
- Incite or provide instructions on how to commit any illegal or unlawful activity;
- Ask for or expose any person’s personally identifying information, contact information, or passwords without that person’s express consent;
- Spam other users with promotional offers or content not related to VOY’s mission or post viruses or malware;
- Violate or attempt to violate the security of the site.
You agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in your country when you use this site.
4. VOY Content
VOY provides support materials, including manuals, workbooks, guides, and videos, and news to help you deepen your knowledge and understanding of issues affecting your world, and to develop and sharpen your skills. Everything on this site is for you and your peers but not for commercial use.
Except for any user-generated content, VOY owns and retains all rights in and to the VOY code, the design, functionality, and architecture of VOY, and any software, support materials or content provided through this site (collectively the “VOY IP”). Except for any rights explicitly granted under these Terms of Use, you are not granted any rights in and to any VOY IP. If you want to use VOY IP in a way that is not allowed by these Terms of Use, you must first contact the VOY team and get permission.
Unless we say otherwise, all of the materials provided by VOY on this site are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported license. This license allows you and others to copy and redistribute the content on this site but it does not allow you or others to remix or transform the content or use the content for commercial purposes. This license requires you to attribute any material you use to the original author. When you use any of VOY materials, please use the following attribution: “Voices of Youth is developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund. See http://www.voicesofyouth.org”. If you still have questions, please feel free to visit the Creative Commons FAQ page, where you will find more information.
Please note that this site and the VOY support materials may contain images, sounds and videos that are trademarked by third parties. Nothing in these Terms of Use or the Creative Commons license limits or reduces a third party’s intellectual property rights. You may not use these materials to label, promote, or endorse any product or service. You are solely responsible for any violation of a third party’s intellectual property rights caused by your misuse of these materials.
The VOY and UNICEF names and logos are the exclusive property of UNICEF. They are protected under international and national laws. Unauthorized use is prohibited. They may not be copied or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of UNICEF. Requests for permission should be sent to us at [email protected].
5. Posting Content
Posting is great, but we want to make sure you do it respectfully! Please remember that everything you post is public.
We are trusting you as an author to make sure that everything you write about is accurate, and we can’t be held accountable for mistakes that you make, so please make sure to do a good job in your editing!
You are given the option to share your opinion on this site, but if you post things that are not nice, such as personal attacks, harsh language or just things that are mean, we have the right to delete them immediately.
Please do not post content on this site that you did not write. You are responsible to only post things that you have written. If you decide to use someone else’s work in your own, make sure that you have permission to post it on the site and credit it appropriately.
If you want to keep something private, please do not send it to us for publication. Everything that you send to us, we can publish or send to other people.
Please also read our VOY quality standards for blog posts.
We are here to help you. If you choose to provide your own content to this site, you consent to allowing VOY to edit that content for clarity purposes. If you submit something with grammar or spelling problems, we reserve the right to edit those things for you. You also agree that your content may be used by VOY to support its work and mission, and that VOY can share your content on social media, newsletters, in presentations, other websites and communication channels for such purposes. All content you submit on this site is licensed to and through VOY under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. This means that you allow us and other users to view, remix, transform, and build upon your content for any purpose. This license also allows us to display, distribute, and reproduce your content on our site, through social media channels, and elsewhere. If you do not want to license your content under this license, then do not share it on this site.
You understand that VOY cannot control all content that is posted on this site. Occasionally, content that does violate our Terms of Use may appear on our site. You agree that when you are exposed to content which does not conform with our Terms of Use or that you otherwise find objectionable or offensive that we are not responsible for such incidents. If you see any content that violates our Terms of Use, please email us at [email protected].
6. Links to Other Sites
When you click on links on this site, some of them may lead you to other places on the Internet, so please keep that in mind and click carefully! We have not checked out all of the other sites and we cannot guarantee that they are always accurate or reliable. We also do not support these sites, their opinions or anything that they are trying to sell. Also note that these other sites are subject to their own terms of use. VOY does not assume any responsibility for content on such other sites.
7. Disclaimer
What you read on this site isn’t necessarily written by UNICEF staff, so the views and opinions voiced on this site are not necessarily the same as those of UNICEF itself.
All content that VOY provides or is submitted by other users on this site is provided “as is”. This simply means that we cannot guarantee that everything you find on this site will be completely accurate or error-free. UNICEF periodically adds, changes, improves, or updates the content on this site without notice. Make sure you use content on this site thoughtfully and responsibly.
You agree that you are solely responsible for any issues that you may encounter that result from your use of this site. Under no circumstances can UNICEF be held responsible for any damages or injuries you may have related to your use of this site.
You agree to indemnify, at your own expense, UNICEF, its officials, employees, consultants and agents, against any claims, including your costs and expenses, by any third party, resulting from your use of this site.
The mention of names of specific companies or products on this site does not imply any intention to infringe proprietary rights, nor should it be interpreted as an endorsement or recommendation on the part of UNICEF.
The use of particular designations of countries or territories or maps on this site does not reflect a position by UNICEF on the legal status of such countries or territories, of their authorities and institutions or of the delimitation of their boundaries.
8. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this site or VOY please contact VOY at [email protected].
Last Updated: 20 November 2018
****