How you can use this site

Sustainify is the working name of Sustainify.sdg Limited, a youth-led NGO based in Hong Kong. This website, www.sustainifysdg.com, is ours, and the work on it is done by volunteers.

You can reach us at info@sustainifysdg.com. That is the only address we use.

In these terms, “we” and “us” means Sustainify, and also — personally, by name, in their own right — its founders, directors, officers, volunteers and anyone who has helped write, check or publish what is here. Every limit and exclusion on this page protects each of those people as well as the organisation. “You” means anyone reading the site or using what we publish on it.

It explains what we do, records what we have actually done, and gives away the Social Project Launch Guide. That is the whole purpose.

There is nothing to join and nothing to pay. No account, no sign-in, no newsletter, no shop. If you want something from us, you email us.

By reading this site, or using anything we publish on it, you are taking these terms as they stand on the date at the top of the page.

If any part of them does not sit right with you, the answer is simple: please do not use the site or the materials.

Our privacy statement is part of these terms and should be read with them.

The Social Project Launch Guide and everything else under Learn is free. Read it, print it, hand it round a class or a club, use it to run your own project, and change it to suit the people you are working with.

We ask two things, and they are not complicated:

That is a permission, not a transfer. We keep ownership of the materials, and we can change or withdraw this permission for the future if it is being abused.

Planning something larger — a translation, a published course, a big print run? Write to us first. We will almost certainly say yes, and we would like to know where the guide is going.

The Sustainify name, the logo, the mascot and the wording and design of this site belong to us, or we have permission to use them. Nothing on this page gives you any right to them.

The photographs are different from the guide. They are pictures of real events, real volunteers and real participants, so please ask before using any of them.

Please do not use our name, logo or mascot in a way that suggests we are involved in something, endorse it, or ran it, when we did not.

Read it, share it, quote it. That is what it is here for, and almost nobody needs the rest of this section.

For the sake of being clear, please do not use the site for:

• Anything against the law, or that helps someone else break it.
• Scraping, crawling or bulk-downloading the site.
• Trying to break, overload or get behind the site.
• Copying the site, or a big part of it, to pass off as your own.
• Using our email address for spam, bulk mail or sales pitches.
• Claiming we are involved in something when we are not.

If someone is doing any of that, we can block them or take the material down, without notice.

The guide is general. It is written for someone starting out, and it cannot know your situation.

It is not legal, financial, tax, safeguarding, insurance, medical or any other kind of professional advice, and it is not a substitute for advice from someone qualified who knows your circumstances.

If you are setting up an organisation, handling other people’s money, signing anything, running a public event, or working with children or vulnerable adults, get proper advice first. Those are exactly the places where general guidance is not enough.

Anything you do on the strength of the guide, you do at your own risk and on your own judgement. You are responsible for the project you run, for the people in it, and for keeping to the law where you are.

We also make no promise that following the guide will work, or lead to any particular result. It might not. That is not something we can be responsible for.

We read everything that arrives. We cannot promise mentorship, a workshop, an introduction, funding, a partnership, or a reply by any particular date. Everyone here is a volunteer, and what we can take on changes from month to month.

Sending us an email creates no contract and no obligation on us, and nothing on this site is an offer of anything. Nothing is a commitment until we have actually agreed it with you in writing.

If we cannot help, we will try to say so rather than leave you waiting.

There is no donate button here. Sustainify.sdg Limited is not yet recognised as a tax-exempt charity under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance, so we cannot promise you a tax receipt. If you would like to support the work, write to us and we will explain what is possible at the moment.

We publish. That is the whole of our role. Reading the site, downloading a worksheet, printing the guide or writing to us does not make us your adviser, your mentor, your supervisor or your partner.

No advisory, fiduciary, supervisory or safeguarding relationship arises between us — not with you, not with your school or organisation, and not with anyone taking part in something you run. We take on no duty to look after you, to check on you, or to keep anyone safe.

We are not there, we cannot see what you are doing, and we have no way of knowing how it is going. Where a duty of that kind is needed, it belongs to you and to the adults around you.

We publish this site in good faith and give it away free. We try hard to keep it true, and if you spot something wrong, please tell us and we will fix it.

Even so, this site and everything on it are provided “as is” and “as available”. So far as the law allows, we give no warranty of any kind, whether said out loud or implied by law. That includes any warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, quality, fitness for a particular purpose, or that the material infringes nobody’s rights.

We do not promise that the site will be available, uninterrupted, timely, secure, free of errors, or free of viruses or anything else harmful. You are responsible for your own device and your own backups.

Dates, figures and press coverage are given as they were reported at the time, not rolled up into totals. Things go out of date: workshops change, projects end, and people move on.

Plainly: we are not responsible for what happens if you act on something you read here. The decisions are yours.

So far as Hong Kong law allows, neither Sustainify nor any of its founders, directors, officers, volunteers or contributors — personally or in any other capacity — is liable to you, or to anyone claiming through you, for any loss or damage arising out of or connected with:

That applies however the loss arises — under a contract, through negligence, under a statute, or in any other way — and whether the loss is direct, indirect, consequential, special or incidental. It covers, in particular, lost profit, lost income, lost funding and lost opportunity; lost or corrupted data; loss of goodwill or damage to reputation; and wasted time, wasted work and wasted money. It applies whether or not we knew, or had been told, that the loss might happen.

There are limits to this, and we would rather set them out than let you find them the hard way. Nothing on this page excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law does not allow us to exclude or limit. Hong Kong’s Control of Exemption Clauses Ordinance (Cap. 71) does not permit the first of those, and we are not attempting it.

The guide exists so that you can go and do something real. When you do, it is your project. You choose what to run, who to involve, where to hold it, and how to keep everyone safe.

We have no part in it. We do not plan it, staff it, fund it, insure it, supervise it or check it. So far as the law allows, we are not liable for anything that happens in it or because of it — to you, to the people taking part, or to anyone else.

We want to be specific, because this is where the real risk sits. That includes anything involving:

• Children and young people under 18.
• Adults who are vulnerable, or who need extra care.
• Money — raising it, holding it, spending it, accounting for it.
• Premises, equipment and transport.
• Food, drink and anything else people consume.
• Travel, trips and activities away from home.
• Injury, illness, harm, distress or loss suffered by anyone taking part.

If you set up an organisation, a club, a society or a company after reading the guide, that is yours too. We are not a founder, a member, a director or a partner in it, we have no say in how it is run, and we are not responsible for what it does or what it owes.

The same goes for anyone you hand the materials on to, and for anything they run in turn.

Clause 11.4 applies to this section as well. There are things we cannot exclude, and this clause does not try to.

Everything here is free. We charge nothing, we sell nothing, and nobody pays us to read the site.

So if, in spite of everything above, it turns out we owe you something, the most we can owe you in total — for everything connected with this site and these materials, however many claims there are and however they are brought — is HK$100.

That is a small figure and it is meant to be. It matches what this is: material written by volunteers and given away for nothing, with no payment and nothing asked in return. We think that makes the limit a fair one.

The cap does not apply to the things listed in clause 11.4, which cannot be capped.

If someone brings a claim against us because of something you did, we ask you to cover us for it: the claim itself, anything we have to pay, and the reasonable costs of dealing with it, legal costs included.

That covers claims arising from:

“Us” here includes our founders, directors, officers, volunteers and contributors personally, because a claim like that usually names people as well as the organisation.

This only covers what is genuinely down to you. It does not apply to anything caused by us.

We link to news articles about our work, to organisations we have worked with, and to our own social accounts. Those sites are not ours. We do not control what they publish, and their terms and privacy policies apply once you land there, not ours.

A link to a partner is a record of work we did together. It is not a claim that they endorse us, or that we vouch for everything they do.

So far as the law allows, we are not liable for anything on those sites, for anything they do, or for anything that happens to you after you follow a link away from here.

We may add, change, suspend or remove this site, or any part of it, at any time and without telling anyone in advance. It is free, and it is run by volunteers in the time they have.

We are not liable to anyone for doing that, and we owe nobody a copy of something we have taken down. If a page matters to you, keep your own copy.

We may also update these terms. We will change the date at the top when we do. We have no mailing list, so there is no announcement — the date is the record, and using the site afterwards means taking the new version.

If a court decides that some part of these terms goes further than the law allows, we would rather it read that part down to whatever is allowed than throw it away. So: read any part that is too wide as narrowed to the most the law permits.

If it cannot be narrowed, that part drops out, and everything else carries on working — the rest of the same clause, and the rest of the same sentence, included.

Each limit in clauses 9 to 14 is meant to stand on its own. If one of them fails, the others are not affected.

If we do not enforce something straight away, or let something go once, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

These terms are between you and us, and nobody else can enforce them — with one exception. Our founders, directors, officers, volunteers and contributors may each rely on and enforce clauses 9 to 14 in their own name, under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Ordinance (Cap. 623). You and we can still change or cancel these terms without asking any of them.

We are based in Hong Kong, and these terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

If there is ever a dispute about them, it goes to the Hong Kong courts, which have exclusive jurisdiction.

Questions about anything on this page, or about using our materials, go to info@sustainifysdg.com.

Our privacy statement covers what happens to that email, and what this site does and does not collect while you are reading it.