Child Safety & Safeguarding Guidelines

Applies to: any DAO whose activities involve participants under the age of 18 (“minors”) — for example, programs delivered in schools or with youth communities, such as Pesa Play.

Status: Mandatory for in-scope DAOs. This page sits alongside the DEP Privacy Notice and Disclaimer and should be read together with them.

1. Why this page exists

DEP 2 DAOs operate as experiments under Kambria’s program. When DAO members approach schools, parents, or guardians, they do so in connection with Kambria’s name. Because minors are involved - and because the safety and personal data of children are specially protected almost everywhere - Kambria sets a minimum safeguarding standard that all in-scope DAOs must meet, and provides the consent and disclaimer materials needed to engage schools and families responsibly.

This is not about adding bureaucracy. It is about protecting the children involved, the DAO members doing the work, and the wider DEP community.

2. Shared responsibility — who does what

Safeguarding is a shared responsibility. The table below makes the split clear.

Important: Kambria does not supervise day-to-day, on-the-ground delivery and is not a party to any agreement between a DAO and a school or family. Meeting this standard does not transfer legal responsibility for delivery to Kambria. But “the DAO is fully responsible” only holds where the DAO has actually been given a standard to follow - which is what this page provides.

3. Core safeguarding principles

•     Best interests of the child first. If an activity could put a child at risk, it does not go ahead - regardless of program timelines or targets.
•     Informed consent. No minor participates without prior written consent from a parent or legal guardian, and from the school where the activity runs through a school.
•     Data minimization. Collect the least child data necessary. Never publish a child’s full name, image, school, or contact details without explicit, specific consent. Store any child data securely and delete it when no longer needed.
•     No private one-to-one adult-minor contact. Interactions with minors happen in supervised, program-related settings only - never in private channels, personal DMs, or unsupervised one-to-one calls.
•     Transparency about the experiment. Schools and families are told plainly that this is an experimental DEP activity and what that means.
•     Report concerns immediately. Any safeguarding concern is escalated at once (see Section 6).

4. Mandatory requirements before engaging minors

Every in-scope DAO must complete all of the following before its first activity involving minors:

1.   Adopt this standard and confirm to your DAO Facilitator that your team has read it.
2.   Designate a safeguarding point of contact within the DAO (named person, reachable, responsible for consent records and concern-handling).
3.   Use the Consent & Disclaimer template (Section 3 of this document set) — or a stronger, locally compliant version — and obtain signed consent from each child’s parent/guardian and, where applicable, written permission from the school.
4.   Check local law. Confirm your activity complies with the child-protection and data-protection laws of the country of delivery (for example, in Kenya: the Data Protection Act, 2019 and the Children Act, 2022). Where you are unsure, pause and raise it with your DAO Facilitator.
5.   Set up secure record-keeping for consent forms and any child data, with access limited to the DAO’s safeguarding contact and essential team members.

5. Representing Kambria to schools and families

When contacting a school, parent, or guardian, DAO members may:

•     State that the DAO is participating in Kambria’s DAO Experimentation Program (DEP) and is taking part in an experimental, community-led initiative.

DAO members must not:

•     Present the activity as an official Kambria product, service, or guarantee, or imply Kambria is delivering or supervising the activity on the ground.
•     Make promises on Kambria’s behalf (funding, outcomes, certifications, continuity) that are not in the program documentation.
•     Collect child data “on behalf of Kambria” - data is collected by the DAO, for the DAO’s activity, under the consent given.

6. Raising a safeguarding concern

If anyone - a member, a parent, a school, or a child - raises a concern about a child’s safety or data:

1.   Ensure the child’s immediate safety and stop the relevant activity if needed.
2.   Notify the DAO safeguarding point of contact immediately.
3.   Escalate to Kambria at [email protected], with enough detail for the team to understand what happened.
4.   Where there is a risk of harm, follow local mandatory-reporting requirements and contact the relevant local authorities.

7. Legal note