Terms and Conditions

Makers Fellowship is a selective, tuition-free technology and entrepreneurship program for young people in Latin America. These terms are a binding agreement between you and Makers Fellowship (Makers, we, us). They govern your use of makers.ngo and everything we run on it, which today means:

• the public website and its program information;
• the fellowship application at /apply, including the draft that is saved while you fill it in;
• the learning platform at /learning, where students follow their classes, record attendance and submit deliverables;
• our talent pool and placements process: profile updates, screening calls, presentations to companies and follow-up after a hire;
• hiring requests submitted by companies at /hire-makers, and the private workspace and links we give them;
• referral codes and the sign-up at /referrals;
• partnership enquiries at /partnerships;
• the classes, calls, events and messages that belong to all of the above, and the internal dashboard our team uses to run them.

We call all of it the Services. Using any part of the Services means you have read and accept these terms, the Privacy Policy and the Usage Policy, which are part of this agreement. If you do not accept them, do not use the Services.

• Applicant: anyone who starts or submits an application to the Fellowship.
• Maker: a person admitted to, or who completed, the Fellowship.
• Student: a maker with access to the learning platform for a class.
• Talent pool: the makers who have agreed to be considered for job opportunities through us.
• Company: an organisation that sends us a hiring request, and the people who act for it.
• Presentation: the moment we share an identified maker's profile with a company for a specific role.
• Placement: the hiring, by a company, of a maker we presented to it.
• Content: the curriculum, classes, recordings, materials, templates and tools we make available.
• Community: the makers, students, mentors, facilitators, companies, allies and team members who take part in the program.

We can change these terms. When we do, we publish the new text here with a new effective date and version. If a change is significant and affects people who already applied, are enrolled, or have a request open with us, we tell them by email at least 30 days before it applies, unless the change is required by law or needed urgently for security, in which case it applies when published. Continuing to use the Services after a change applies means you accept it.

A consent you gave through a form is tied to the version of the text that was on screen when you gave it. We store that version alongside your record, so a later edit never rewrites what you actually agreed to.

To use the Services you must:

• be 18 or older and legally able to enter into this agreement;
• give us information that is true, complete and current, and keep it that way;
• not have been expelled from the program or banned from the Services before.

If you are between 14 and 17, the program built for you is Next, not this one. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and we delete it when we find it.

Admission to the Fellowship has its own requirements, published for each cohort, including an age range and a working command of English. The application form is written in English on purpose: it is the first filter. Meeting the requirements does not entitle you to a place.

If you submit a form or act on behalf of a company, a university or any other organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to do so and to accept these terms for it, and both you and the organisation are bound by them.

Applying is free, and so is the Fellowship. We never charge applicants or makers to apply, to study, or to be presented to a company. Admission is selective and discretionary, admission decisions are final, and we do not owe an explanation for them. Specifically:

• Everything you tell us must be true. We verify references and check the authenticity of the certificates and answers in your form. False information ends your application, and if it is discovered later, your place in the program.
• One application per year. Applying more than once in the same admission cycle, or using a different email or name to avoid being noticed, disqualifies you from that cycle.
• Part of the process may be run by a partner. Our admissions partner Nodi may evaluate your application and invite you to its own steps. Its platform has its own terms, which you accept separately when you use it.
• Not being selected is not a rejection. We keep your application for up to one year in our Talent Network so we can consider you for later intakes and for opportunities that fit your profile, unless you receive a formal rejection email or ask us to delete it.
• Keeping your contact details current is your responsibility. We are not responsible for communications you miss because your phone number or email address is wrong or out of date.

The specific terms you accept when you register for a recruitment event are at Application Terms, and they apply in addition to this section.

While you fill in the application, your answers are saved in your browser, and — once you have entered an email address — also on our servers so you can come back to them. The saved copy is deleted when you submit the application, and you can delete it before that.

Draft recovery works only on the device and browser you started on. The key to your draft is stored in that browser and nowhere else; typing your email somewhere else does not bring the draft back. That is deliberate: being able to retrieve a draft by email alone would let anyone who knows your address read it.

A draft is a convenience, not a backup. We do not guarantee it will be there, and a draft is not an application until you submit it before the deadline.

Referral codes belong to a maker, to a member of our team, or to one of our campaigns. A code records who sent an applicant our way. It does not improve anyone's chances of being admitted, and it carries no payment or reward unless we have agreed one with you in writing.

• Use your own code. Do not sell it, buy one, or present a code as yours when it is not.
• Do not spam. Sending your code to people who did not ask for it, in bulk, is misuse.
• Do not register people who did not agree to apply.

We can cancel a code and remove the referrals attached to it if it is used this way. An unrecognised code never blocks an application: we keep it because it tells us what the applicant believed, and nothing more.

Joining the talent pool is voluntary, and you can leave it at any time. While you are in it:

• Keep your profile true and current. Each month we send you a private link to confirm or update it. Profiles that are not confirmed for a long time stop being considered for new roles until you update them.
• Invitations are offers, not obligations. When a role fits your profile, we may invite you to a screening call. You decide whether to take part. If you book a call, attend it or cancel it in time.
• What you learn about a role is confidential. The company, the salary and the details of the process are shared with you to evaluate the opportunity. Do not publish or pass them on.
• We present you only with a recorded basis — your signed participation agreement or your explicit confirmation for that role — as described in the Privacy Policy.
• If you are hired, we will check in with you during the first 90 days. Your answers help us support you, and they never change the fee the company pays.

Any job you take is a relationship between you and the company that hires you. We are not your employer, we do not set your working conditions, and we are not responsible for the company's obligations towards you. We do not guarantee that you will be presented, interviewed or hired. Where you have signed a participation agreement with us, it governs along with these terms, and it prevails if they conflict.

A request sent through /hire-makers starts a conversation. It is not a contract, and it does not oblige us to present anyone. We triage requests, hold a kick-off call and, if the role fits, send a written proposal. If we decide not to work on a request, we say so.

Fees. Nothing on this page sets a price. The fee, its currency, how it is split into instalments, when each one is due, what must be paid before we share a shortlist, and any guarantee or replacement period are set in the written proposal your company accepts. That proposal and any agreement signed with us govern along with these terms, and prevail if they conflict. Fees are due as the proposal says, plus the taxes the law requires; if a payment is late, we may pause the process until it is made.

By sending a request, your company agrees that:

• the information about the role, the salary range and the contract type is accurate, and the role is real and lawful;
• hiring decisions will comply with applicable employment and anti-discrimination law, and any maker it hires will be hired under a lawful contract;
• profiles we share are confidential. They are for evaluating the role they were sent for. Do not forward them, publish them, or add them to a database of your own. Your company handles them as a controller under the data protection law that applies to it, and deletes the profiles of makers it does not hire once its evaluation is over;
• a presentation is the record of attribution. We record the date we present each profile to you, and that record cannot be altered afterwards. If, within twelve months of a presentation, your company or anyone related to it hires — directly, through another vendor, or for a different role — someone we presented, that is a placement and the fee is owed, unless the proposal says otherwise;
• the private links we send for booking calls, managing the request and answering follow-ups are for your company alone. What is entered through them — the supervisor you name, signed agreements, payment evidence, interview results, offers — is your company's statement, and it must be true;
• your company will answer our follow-ups during the first 90 days of a placement in good faith, so we can catch problems early.

We do not guarantee that we will find a suitable candidate, that a maker will accept an offer, or how a hire will perform. Any guarantee is only what your company's proposal states.

A form sent through /partnerships is an enquiry. It creates no obligation for either side, grants no right to use our name, logo or materials, and binds nobody until there is a signed agreement that says otherwise.

Access to /learning is by invitation only, for students enrolled in a class. When you accept your invitation and set a password:

• Your account is yours alone. One account per person. Keep your password secret, do not let anyone else use your account, and tell us immediately if you think it has been compromised. You are responsible for what is done with it.
• Attendance is personal. Enter a session code only for yourself and only when you attended. Sharing a code, or entering one for someone else, is misconduct.
• Deliverables must be your own work. Cite the sources you use and follow the rules of your class on teamwork and on artificial intelligence tools. Submissions after the due date are marked late.
• Keep your own copy. Your access ends when your enrolment ends or is removed, and removing an enrolment deletes its deliverables. The platform is not an archive.

Completion of a class and any certificate depend on the attendance and deliverable criteria we set for that class, and we decide whether they have been met.

Everyone in the community — in classes, calls, events, group chats and messages — must:

• treat others with respect, whatever their origin, gender, beliefs or background;
• not harass, threaten, discriminate against or demean anyone, and not share offensive or illegal content;
• not use the community to sell, advertise or recruit for anything without our permission;
• keep confidential what other participants, mentors and companies share in closed sessions — their ideas, numbers, strategy and personal stories — unless they agree otherwise.

Depending on what happened, a breach can lead to a warning, temporary suspension, or permanent expulsion from the program and the talent pool, and we may involve the authorities. If someone in the community makes you feel unsafe, tell us at team@makers.ngo.

Recording. Classes, workshops, demo days and events of the program, whether online or in person, may be recorded on video, audio or photograph by us or by people we authorise. Class recordings are shared with the students of the cohort.

Authorization. By enrolling in the program or attending one of our events, you authorize us, freely and expressly, to capture, edit and reproduce your image, voice and name as they appear in that material, and to publish it on our website, social media, newsletters, reports to funders and allies, and materials promoting current and future programs. This authorization is free of charge, non-exclusive, worldwide, and lasts as long as the material is in use, subject to your right to withdraw it below.

Testimonials and success stories that name you, your employer or your placement, or quote you, need your specific approval before we publish them.

Your right not to appear. If you do not want to appear in promotional material, tell us in writing at team@makers.ngo before the program or event starts, or tell our team at the event. We will take reasonable steps to leave you out of what we publish. Appearing incidentally in the background of a group image is not promotional use.

Withdrawal. You can ask us at any time to remove a specific item that shows you. We will remove it from the channels we control within a reasonable time, but we cannot recall material that others have already copied or shared.

Recording by participants. You may not record, photograph, stream or share classes, calls or closed sessions — or their recordings — without our written permission.

Ours. The website, its text, design and software, the Content, and the Makers name and logo belong to us or to our licensors. You may read and share the public pages. You may not copy, sell or redistribute the Content, use it for a competing program, or use our name or logo to suggest an endorsement or a partnership that does not exist.

Your licence. While you are enrolled, we give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to use the Content for your own learning. It ends when your participation ends. Sharing your access or the materials with people outside your cohort is not allowed.

Yours. What you write in a form, your deliverables, and the projects and companies you build during the program stay yours. You give us a free, non-exclusive licence to store, review and comment on them, to use them to run and evaluate the program, and to share your professional profile with a company under the conditions in section 8. We do not acquire ownership of, or equity in, your projects or companies through these terms; any such arrangement needs a separate signed agreement. Showcasing your work publicly with your name needs your permission.

You confirm that what you submit does not infringe anyone else's rights. If you send us a suggestion about the Services, we can use it without owing you anything for it.

When you send us a form, enrol, or join the talent pool, you agree that we can contact you about it by email and, where you gave us a phone number, over WhatsApp. That includes confirmations, decisions, invitations to calls and reminders about them, monthly profile updates, placement check-ins and access to the learning platform.

If we do not select you, or once you are part of the community, we may invite you to programs, workshops or events we think are worth your time. You can stop those at any time by replying STOP on WhatsApp or by replying to any of our emails. We will still send you the messages that concern a process you have open with us. The details are in the Privacy Policy.

The rules for using the Services — what is not allowed, what happens if you break them, and how to report a security problem you have found — are in the Usage Policy. It forms part of these terms, and breaking it is breaking these terms.

Access to the internal dashboard is granted by us to named people, with a role that decides what they can see and change. If you hold one:

• the account is yours alone — do not share credentials or let someone else use it;
• use it only for work on behalf of Makers, and only for the data that work requires;
• do not export, copy or keep personal data outside our systems beyond what the task needs, and treat everything you see as confidential, during and after your time with us;
• tell us immediately if you think an account or a device has been compromised.

We check your access on every request rather than trusting a stored session, so access can be withdrawn at any moment and takes effect immediately. Sensitive actions are recorded.

The Services rely on providers we do not own — for hosting, data storage, email, WhatsApp, calendars and video calls, analytics, admissions and classification of profiles. The Privacy Policy lists them and what each one handles. Some of them, such as Nodi, Google Meet or WhatsApp, have their own terms that apply when you use them.

We also link to sites that are not ours, including other programs run by our community and the places where class recordings are hosted. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content or their handling of your data.

The Services are provided as they are and as available. We do not promise they will always be available, be free of errors, or keep any piece of data forever. We can change, pause or close any part of them — including closing applications for a cohort, rescheduling a class or changing the curriculum — and we give notice when it is reasonable to do so.

We do not guarantee outcomes. Being admitted does not guarantee a job, an internship, an investment or an income; being in the talent pool does not guarantee that a company will contact you; and the information and tools we share are educational, not legal, financial or professional advice. What we commit to is the program and the process described on this site.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential damages, for lost profits, opportunities, earnings or data, for interruptions of the Services, or for decisions a third party makes about you — including a company that does or does not hire you, or a maker who does or does not accept an offer.

For companies, our total liability arising from a request is limited to the fees your company paid us for that request.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited under Colombian law, including liability for wilful misconduct or gross negligence, your rights as a consumer where they apply, or your rights over your personal data.

You will indemnify Makers, its team, mentors and allies against claims, losses and reasonable costs, including legal fees, caused by your breach of these terms or the Usage Policy, by information you gave us that was false, or by your infringement of someone else's rights. For companies, this includes a breach of the confidentiality of the profiles we shared or of employment law in a hire.

We can reject an application, remove someone from the program or the talent pool, close a learning account, cancel a referral code, decline or close a company request, withdraw dashboard access, or block access to the Services if these terms or the Usage Policy are broken, if information given to us turns out to be false, if we suspect fraud, or if we are required to. Where it is reasonable to do so, we say why.

You can stop using the Services at any time, leave the talent pool, and ask us to delete your data as described in the Privacy Policy. Fees a company already owes stay owed. The sections on confidentiality, intellectual property, attribution of presentations, liability, indemnity and disputes survive the end of this agreement.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Colombia. Processing of personal data follows Law 1581 of 2012 and the rules that develop it.

If a dispute arises, write to us first. We will both try in good faith to resolve it directly within 30 days.

• If you are an individual, you can then take it to the competent courts or authorities of Colombia, including the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio. Nothing here takes away a right you have under the consumer or data protection law of your country.
• If you are a company, and unless your signed agreement with us says otherwise, the dispute will be settled by arbitration under the rules of the Arbitration and Conciliation Centre of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, by a single arbitrator deciding in law, in Bogotá and in Spanish.

• Entire agreement. These terms, the Privacy Policy, the Usage Policy, the Application Terms and any agreement you sign with us are the whole agreement between us about the Services. A signed agreement prevails over this page where they conflict.
• Severability. If one clause is held invalid, the rest stays in force, and the invalid one is applied as far as the law allows.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right at one point, we have not given it up.
• Assignment. You cannot transfer your place, your account or this agreement to someone else. We can transfer this agreement to an organisation that takes over the program, and we will tell you if we do.
• Force majeure. Neither side is responsible for failing to perform because of events outside its reasonable control.
• Notices. We send notices to the email you gave us; you send them to team@makers.ngo.
• Language. If we publish these terms in another language and the versions differ, the English version prevails.

Write to team@makers.ngo with any question about these terms or about a process you have open with us. Questions about your data go to team@makers.ngo.