Participation should be voluntary, informed, and respectful.

Voluntary and Informed Participation

A person should be able to understand what they are being invited to do before making a commitment.

Participation should not depend on pressure, manufactured urgency, or deliberately vague expectations. Declining an invitation should not be treated as disrespect, disloyalty, or lack of interest. Where withdrawal becomes limited after a particular stage, that limit should be explained before commitment.

Clear Expectations

Essential requirements should be distinguished from habits or conventions. When a requirement is essential, it should be stated clearly. Requirements should not be added merely because they are familiar or because 'this is how it is usually done.'

Where important details remain uncertain, the uncertainty should be communicated honestly. Material changes to a participant's role should also be explained clearly.

Consent Is Specific

Agreement to participate does not automatically mean agreement to every form of documentation, publicity, or reuse. A participant should not be surprised by how their image, words, work, or story later appears. When the intended use changes substantially, consent should be reconsidered.

Attribution, Ownership, and Use

Meaningful contributions should be recognised in a form appropriate to the work and the participant's preference. A person should not be required to accept public visibility in order to receive recognition. Untold Coffee should not present collaborative work as solely its own when external contribution meaningfully shaped the result.

Before substantial work begins, the relevant arrangement should clarify ownership, expected editing, publication, permitted reuse, possible commercial use, preferred attribution, and any limits on withdrawal after publication. Public contribution should not be treated as automatic transfer of unlimited rights.

Representation and Personal Stories

Participation does not automatically make a person a representative of a community, country, profession, diagnosis, culture, institution, or social group. Participants should not be asked to speak for an entire group merely because they belong to it.

Personal stories may add important context, but they should not be extracted, simplified, dramatised, or turned into promotional material without specific permission. A story shared privately or for learning purposes should not automatically become public content. Where editing is necessary, the meaning and dignity of the participant's account should be preserved.

Reciprocity and Knowledge Return

Untold Coffee does not treat participants, communities, local contexts, or cultural knowledge as raw material for external visibility. Where knowledge is gathered through collaboration, research, interviews, fieldwork, or community participation, consideration should be given to how value returns.

Return does not mean that every output must be public or that every participant receives the same benefit. It means the relationship should not end with extraction.

Different Ways of Contributing

Meaningful participation does not require one standard communication style or one visible form of performance. Different formats do not remove standards — the quality, relevance, care, and reliability of the contribution remain important. The form used to demonstrate those qualities may vary when the activity allows it.

Where practical, participation may also support written or asynchronous communication, advance context, clear role definitions, preparation time, more than one valid output format, and reduced unnecessary public exposure. A person should not be required to disclose a diagnosis merely to describe a communication or participation barrier.

Privacy and Proportionality

Only information relevant to the activity should be requested. Participation should not become a reason to collect unnecessary medical or diagnostic information, identity details, financial information, personal history, or sensitive demographic data.

Where personal information is required, participants should be told why it is needed, how it may be used, and whether a separate privacy notice applies. Sensitive information should not be collected merely to demonstrate that an activity is inclusive or socially responsible.

Children and Young Participants

Activities involving children or minors require additional care. Participation should be age-appropriate and should include suitable permission, supervision, limited data collection, and protection from unnecessary public exposure.

Educational participation must remain separate from promotional use. Permission to take part in an activity does not automatically include permission to publish a child's name, image, quotation, or personal story. Detailed safeguarding procedures should be appropriate to the actual activity and jurisdiction.

Payment and Exchange of Value

The form of compensation or exchange should be described accurately. Educational value, visibility, or experience should not be presented as payment when real work is being requested without compensation. Where financial resources are limited, that limitation should be stated honestly rather than disguised as an opportunity.

Raising Questions or Concerns

Participants should have a clear route to ask questions before committing, report a barrier, raise a concern, question how their contribution was used, or request clarification about attribution, privacy, or participation conditions.

Until an activity-specific process exists, the Contact page should provide an appropriate route. Untold Coffee should not claim that a formal complaint, investigation, appeal, or safeguarding system exists unless it has actually been established.

Partners and Institutions

These principles also apply when participation occurs through a university, business, supplier, cultural institution, community organisation, or other partner. Institutional involvement does not remove the need for clear expectations, appropriate consent, attribution, privacy, fair representation, clarity about ownership and publication, and suitable knowledge return.

A partner should not be assumed to speak for every individual participant. Institutional permission should not automatically replace individual consent where a person's image, words, identity, or personal story will be used.

Limits of These Principles

These principles do not guarantee acceptance of every proposal, continuous availability of opportunities, payment for every contribution, publication of every output, adoption of every requested arrangement, or identical conditions across every platform, partner, or location.

They do not guarantee complete removal of risk, disagreement, or uncertainty, nor legal or contractual rights beyond the relevant agreement. They establish the direction and public standard against which participation within the Untold Coffee ecosystem should be designed, communicated, and reviewed.