Terms of Service

Who we are

Bantu Connect is a community platform for the Somali Bantu community — a place to celebrate weddings, honor milestones, organize gatherings, remember the people we lose, and stay close to each other. It is operated by AWO Logistics LLC, a Missouri limited liability company.

Creating an account means you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree with them, don’t create an account. How we handle your information is set out separately in the Privacy Policy.

Who can use Bantu Connect

You must be 18 or older. This applies to everyone — members, buyers, sellers, and event organizers. Bantu Connect is not built for children and is not directed at them. We ask you to confirm your age when you sign up, and we’ll close an account if we learn the person behind it is under 18.

Anyone who meets that bar can join. You don’t need an invitation and nobody has to vouch for you. You need a working email address, and you confirm it before you can sign in. One account per person, please, and use the name people actually know you by — this is a community where recognizing each other is the whole point.

You’re responsible for everything that happens under your account, whether or not you did it, so keep your password to yourself. If you think someone else has it, change it and sign out of every device from your settings, and tell us. We are not liable for loss caused by someone else using your account, and if you share access you are responsible for what they do.

If someone under 18 uses the platform by misrepresenting their age, the parent or legal guardian who allowed it is responsible for everything done under that account, including any money spent, and agrees to these terms on that person’s behalf.

What you can do here

Everything the platform currently offers, so you know what these terms cover:

• A profile with your photo, bio, city, home Reer, education, work history, skills, and milestones
• Connecting with other members, and a directory you can search
• Creating and attending gatherings — weddings, funerals, fundraisers, meetings, and more
• Posting moments, commenting, reacting, saving, and resharing
• Private messages, one-to-one and in groups, including photos and files
• Fanaanka, where community artists upload music and appear on weekly charts
• Community awards — applying, nominating, and voting
• Sports predictions, where you call the winner of a game and earn or lose points
• A directory of community businesses
• Asking to be verified as an artist or a well-known member of the community

Some of these involve other people’s information as much as your own. The rules below on content and conduct apply across all of it.

Your content stays yours

Posts, photos, gatherings, milestones, music, listings, and messages you create remain yours. By putting them on Bantu Connect you grant AWO Logistics LLC a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence, sublicensable to the providers who host and deliver the platform, to store, copy, reproduce, reformat, resize, encode, create previews and thumbnails of, transmit, and display that content — for the purpose of operating, securing, and improving the platform.

Who can see it is still governed by your audience setting, and this licence does not widen that by a single person. It covers the technical acts required to run the service, not a right to show your content to an audience you didn’t choose. We may also use content you have made public to promote Bantu Connect; content limited to a narrower audience is never used that way.

The licence is not a transfer of ownership and it ends when you delete the content, except for copies already made in routine backups, which age out on their own, and copies other members lawfully made or received while the content was up. Where the law allows you to waive moral rights in content you post, you waive them to that extent.

When you post something, you are telling us all of this is true: you own it or have every right and permission needed to post it; posting it breaks no law and no agreement you have with anyone else; it infringes nobody’s copyright, trademark, privacy, or publicity rights; and you have permission from every identifiable person in a photograph or recording, or from their parent or guardian if they are a child. If that turns out not to be true, the consequences are yours, not ours.

Be careful with other people. Weddings, funerals, and family gatherings mean photographs of people who never agreed to be online — including children, and including people whose safety or immigration situation makes being findable a real risk. Before you post a photo of someone else or name them, consider whether they would want it. If someone asks you to take a photo of them down, take it down. If they ask us, we may remove it.

What belongs to us

Bantu Connect itself — the software, the design, the layout, the name, the wordmark, the logos, and everything we created that isn’t member content — belongs to AWO Logistics LLC or to the people we licence it from, and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Your account gives you a personal, limited, revocable, non-transferable permission to use the platform as it is meant to be used, and nothing more. Every right we haven’t expressly given you, we keep.

Don’t copy, scrape, mirror, frame, decompile, or reverse-engineer the platform, don’t use bots or automated tools against it, don’t strip or obscure our branding, and don’t use our name or logo without written permission.

If you send us an idea — a suggestion, a feature request, feedback — we can use it freely, for anything, without owing you payment, credit, or confidentiality. Don’t send us anything you want to keep or be paid for.

How to treat each other

The bar is short and it is not negotiable. Don’t:

• Harass, threaten, bully, or stalk anyone
• Post hate speech, or attack people over ethnicity, clan, religion, gender, disability, or origin
• Impersonate another person, or claim a role in the community you don’t hold
• Post sexual content, graphic violence, or anything sexualizing a minor
• Spam, scam, phish, or run a pyramid or investment scheme
• Share someone’s private information — address, phone number, immigration status — without their permission
• Break the law, or use this platform to help someone else break it
• Scrape the site, attack it, or try to get at data that isn’t yours

You can report a post, comment, gathering, milestone, or message from the item itself. Reports go to our administrators.

Moderation, and what we can see

Only administrators moderate. Reer leads organize their Reer but hold no moderation powers, and awards committee members can only act inside the award they serve on.

Your private messages stay private, with one narrow exception. If a message is reported to us, an administrator can reveal that specific reported message in order to act on the report. They cannot browse your conversations, and every single reveal is written to an audit log before the message is shown — so a message an administrator has read can never be a message nobody knows they read.

We can remove content and suspend or close accounts that break these terms. Where it’s reasonable we’ll tell you what happened and why, and serious or repeated cases can mean removal without warning. Decisions about content and accounts are ours to make, and we try to make them consistently.

We are not obliged to monitor what members post. We may review, screen, refuse, edit, or remove anything at any time, with or without notice, but nothing here creates a duty to look. Content on this platform is created by the people who post it, not by us, and hosting it is not adopting or endorsing it. Acting on one thing doesn’t oblige us to act on another, and choosing to moderate does not make us responsible for what we didn’t catch.

Copyright complaints

Members upload music, photographs, and writing here, so sometimes someone posts what isn’t theirs. We follow the notice-and-takedown process in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512.

If you own a copyright and believe something here infringes it, send our designated copyright agent a notice that includes all of the following, because the law requires each one:

• Your physical or electronic signature, as the owner or someone authorized to act for them
• What work you say was infringed
• What content on Bantu Connect you want removed, and enough detail for us to find it
• How we can reach you
• A statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorized by the owner, its agent, or the law
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for them

We remove or disable what the notice identifies and tell the member who posted it. If they believe it was a mistake or a misidentification, they can send a counter-notice with the elements § 512(g) requires, and we may restore the content after the statutory waiting period unless the complainant files a court action.

Repeat infringers lose their accounts. We terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of members who infringe repeatedly. Be careful before you send a notice: § 512(f) makes someone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing liable for the damages that follow.

Gatherings and tickets

Paid tickets are not switched on yet. This section describes how they will work, and applies from the moment they open.

Whoever creates a gathering runs it. They set the date, the place, the price, and the rules, and they are responsible for the event actually happening. Bantu Connect provides the listing and handles the payment; we do not run anyone’s event, inspect the venue, or guarantee that it will go ahead.

On a paid ticket we charge a service fee of 5% plus $0.75 per ticket. The buyer sees that fee at checkout, itemized, before paying. The organizer receives the ticket’s face value minus Stripe’s processing fee, which comes out of their payout. Free tickets carry no fee at all, and a paid ticket costs at least $5, so the flat part of the fee never dwarfs the ticket.

Refunds on tickets follow the organizer’s stated policy, so read it before you buy. If the organizer cancels the event, buyers are refunded. When a ticket is fully refunded we return our service fee; Stripe’s processing fee is not refundable and stays with the organizer.

Going to a gathering in person

Gatherings listed here happen in the real world, in venues we have never seen, run by people we have not vetted, attended by people we have not screened. We do not inspect venues, check permits or insurance, verify that food was safely prepared, confirm that an organizer is who they say they are, or run background checks on anyone. A listing on this platform is an announcement, not a recommendation and not a safety assurance.

If you host, the event is yours. You are responsible for the venue, permits, licences, insurance, food safety, the safety of your guests, supervising any children present, and complying with every law that applies to what you are running. If something goes wrong at your gathering, the claim lands on you.

Fundraisers

We take no platform fee on a fundraiser. Not on a janazah collection, not on a medical fund, not on a family in trouble. Nothing.

Stripe still charges its processing fee on every contribution, because that is the cost of moving money and it isn’t ours to waive. At checkout we offer the donor the option to cover it so the full amount reaches the organizer. If a donor declines, that contribution’s processing fee comes out of the total collected — and we tell organizers this when they create the fundraiser, not when the money arrives.

A fundraiser here is community mutual aid, not a charity. AWO Logistics LLC is not a nonprofit and Bantu Connect is not a registered charitable organization, so contributions are not tax-deductible and we don’t issue receipts for them. The organizer is responsible for what the money is used for. We don’t verify need, we don’t audit spending, and we don’t guarantee that funds reach the person named. Give to people you know or to a cause somebody you trust stands behind.

Fundraiser payouts can be held for a period before release, and if a donor disputes a contribution with their bank, the sections on refunds and chargebacks below apply to the organizer exactly as they apply to a seller.

If you run a fundraiser, you are promising us that the purpose you describe is true, that you are entitled to collect for it, that the money will go where you said, and that you are not collecting for anything unlawful. Misrepresenting a fundraiser is fraud, and we will treat it as such.

We can remove a fundraiser, stop it accepting money, hold the funds, or return them to donors if we have reasonable grounds to believe it is fraudulent, unlawful, or not what it claims to be — and we can do that without notice and without deciding who is right. Donations are a gift from the donor to the organizer. We are not a party to it, we are not a trustee or escrow agent, we hold nothing on anyone’s behalf, and we do not guarantee that a single dollar is spent the way it was described.

Buying and selling

The marketplace is not open yet. This section describes how it will work, and applies from the moment it opens.

Members will be able to sell products and services to other members. Bantu Connect is the venue and the payment path — we are not the seller. We don’t own, make, inspect, test, or hold what’s being sold, and we don’t guarantee its quality, legality, safety, or that it will arrive. The contract for a sale is between the buyer and the seller.

Sellers complete Stripe Connect onboarding before they can be paid. Stripe verifies their identity and bank details directly and holds that information under its own agreement with them; sellers agree to Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement as part of signing up. Bantu Connect never sees or stores bank account numbers.

Our commission is 7% of the sale, or $0.75, whichever is greater, deducted automatically from the payout. That commission already covers Stripe’s processing cost, so buyers pay the listed price with nothing added. Sellers see every sale broken down: sale amount, Stripe’s processing fee, our commission, and the net payout.

The $0.75 minimum only applies to sales under about $10.71, where 7% on its own would not cover what the card networks charge us to take the payment. We would rather say that plainly than quietly refuse small listings.

If you sell here

You are responsible for:

• Describing what you’re selling accurately, with honest photos and a real price
• Selling only what you’re legally allowed to sell, and having the right to sell it
• Stating on every listing how it is delivered or collected, what delivery costs, how long it takes and where you ship
• Actually fulfilling orders, and shipping or delivering when you said you would
• Your own taxes — income, sales, and anything else. We don’t withhold or file on your behalf
• Any license or permit your trade requires, including for prepared food
• Answering buyers, and answering us when a claim is opened

Don’t list: weapons or ammunition, drugs or drug paraphernalia, tobacco, alcohol, prescription medicines or supplements making medical claims, live animals, human remains, counterfeits, stolen goods, recalled products, adult content, financial instruments or investment opportunities, anything requiring a license you don’t hold, or anything illegal where the buyer or seller is.

Payouts may be delayed, held, or reserved — particularly for new sellers, unusually large sales, or patterns that look risky — so there are funds available if something goes wrong. We’ll tell you when we hold a payout.

Tax reporting. Stripe may be required to report your earnings to the IRS and to send you a Form 1099-K, and you may be asked for a taxpayer identification number or a W-9 before you can be paid. We can hold payouts until that is provided. We do not give tax advice, we don’t withhold on your behalf, and what you owe is between you and the tax authorities.

Money we won't move

We and Stripe are both bound by US financial-crime and sanctions law. You may not use Bantu Connect to send, collect, or launder money for anything unlawful, to fund a sanctioned person, entity, or country, or to evade any sanctions programme administered by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. You confirm that you are not on any US sanctions list and are not acting for anyone who is.

Where we reasonably suspect fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion, or any other unlawful use of payments here, we may — without notice — refuse or reverse a transaction, freeze or withhold a payout, suspend or close an account, and report it to law enforcement or a regulator. We will do that even where it turns out to be a false alarm, because the alternative is being the one who moved the money.

Refunds and problems with an order

Buyers have 14 days from delivery, from the expected delivery date, or from the event date for a ticket, to ask for a refund because something never arrived, was materially different from its description, or was defective.

Sellers and organizers have 3 business days to respond to a claim. Miss that window and we may decide the claim ourselves, usually in the buyer’s favor. If a claim is valid we can refund the buyer on the seller’s behalf and recover the amount from their balance or from future sales.

On a full refund we return our commission or service fee. Stripe’s processing fee is not refundable, and it stays with the seller or organizer — which means a refunded sale costs them Stripe’s fee. Build that into your prices.

These are not refundable, unless they were never delivered or were materially not as described:

• Digital goods, once downloaded or accessed
• Custom or made-to-order work, once started
• Services already performed
• Perishable items, including prepared food

Tickets follow the organizer’s own policy, except when an event is cancelled, in which case buyers are refunded.

Chargebacks

A chargeback is when a buyer disputes a charge with their own bank instead of with the seller. If that happens, the disputed amount and any dispute fee Stripe charges are the seller’s or organizer’s responsibility. We may take it from their balance, withhold payouts, or set it against future sales, and they need to send us evidence promptly when we ask.

To be plain about it: if you have already been paid out and your balance won’t cover a dispute, you still owe us the difference. We can ask you for it and pursue it.

Disagreements between members

Deal with each other first — most problems are a misunderstanding and a message fixes them. If that doesn’t work, report the order or the member and we’ll look at it. Where we decide an internal dispute, that decision is ours to make and we make it on the evidence we have. It isn’t a court ruling, and it doesn’t stop you pursuing the other member yourself.

If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code § 1542, which says: “A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.” You waive any similar provision of any other state’s law.

Payments

All payments run through Stripe. Card numbers, bank accounts, and government ID given for seller verification go to Stripe directly — Bantu Connect never receives or stores them. Stripe handles that information under its own terms and privacy policy, which you should read at stripe.com/privacy.

Fees can change. If we change them we’ll say so before the change applies to your sales or your event, and the fee in force is the one shown at checkout at the time of the transaction.

What we don't promise

Bantu Connect is provided as it is. We work to keep it running and accurate, but we don’t promise it will always be available, error-free, or free of content you’d rather not see. We don’t vet members beyond confirming an email address, and a verified badge means we believe someone is who they say they are — not that we vouch for their conduct, their business, or their event.

We don’t check that a gathering will happen, that a fundraiser’s money goes where it should, that an item is as described, or that a business is legitimate. Sports predictions are a game of judgement for points. No money is ever staked, deducted, or paid out on a prediction, and points have no cash value.

Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, AWO Logistics LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential losses, for lost profits or data, or for what another member does — including a seller who doesn’t deliver, an organizer whose event falls through, or a fundraiser whose funds are misused.

Two things that limit never covers, because Missouri law does not let it: our own fraud or intentional misconduct, and death or personal injury caused by our negligence. Some states restrict these limits further, and where that is so, this section applies only as far as that state allows.

Covering us

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless AWO Logistics LLC and its owners, officers, employees, and agents from every claim, demand, investigation, loss, liability, damage, penalty, and cost — including reasonable attorneys’ fees — arising out of or connected with:

• Anything you post, send, sell, host, collect, or do on Bantu Connect
• Any gathering you organize or attend
• Any item or service you sell, and anything that goes wrong with it
• Any fundraiser you run and what happens to the money
• Your breach of these terms, or of any law, or of anyone else’s rights
• Any tax you owe and don’t pay

We may take over the defence of any claim you are covering at your expense, and you will cooperate with us if we do. You will not settle anything that admits fault on our behalf, imposes an obligation on us, or affects our rights, without our written consent. This section outlives your account.

Leaving, and being asked to leave

You can stop using Bantu Connect whenever you like. In your settings you can pause your profile, which hides you from the directory and search while leaving your posts and messages where they are, or request deletion.

Deletion happens on a fixed date 30 days after you ask. The date doesn’t move if you come back — instead you’ll see a banner with the date and a button to keep your account, for as long as the request stands. On that date your profile, your content, and the gatherings you created are deleted.

Two things survive: records we have to keep for tax and accounting reasons if you ever bought or sold something here, and moderation records where we need them to enforce these terms. The Privacy Policy sets out how long.

We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and we can stop offering the platform, in which case we’ll give reasonable notice and settle any balance owed to you.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change in a way that actually affects you, we’ll tell you rather than quietly editing the page — by email or a notice in the app, before the change takes effect. The date at the top is always the current version. Using Bantu Connect after a change means you accept it; if you don’t, close your account.

Which law applies, and where disputes go

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them or out of your use of Bantu Connect, are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Talk to us first. Before either of us starts anything formal, the one with the complaint sends the other a written description of it and what they want, and gives the other 60 days to resolve it. This step is required, and the clock on any deadline pauses while it runs. Most things end here.

Binding arbitration. If the 60 days pass without resolution, you and AWO Logistics LLC agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms, the platform, or your relationship with us — whether based in contract, tort, statute, fraud, or anything else, and whether it arose before or after these terms — will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration, not in court. This agreement is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act.

Arbitration is administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before one arbitrator who issues a written decision. It takes place in the county where you live, or by telephone or video if you prefer, so you are never asked to travel to us. For any claim under $10,000 we pay the AAA filing and administrative fees, unless the arbitrator finds the claim frivolous. The arbitrator can award anything a court could award to you individually, including the relief the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act provides.

Who decides what is arbitrable. The arbitrator, not a court, decides all questions about whether this arbitration agreement applies, is enforceable, or covers a particular dispute — except the paragraph immediately above, which a court decides.

You can opt out. Send us written notice within 30 days of first accepting these terms saying you opt out of arbitration, with your name and the email on your account. That is all it takes. Opting out costs you nothing, changes nothing else about your account, and we will not treat you differently for it. If you opt out, disputes go to court under the section below.

What stays out of arbitration. Either of us may bring a qualifying claim in small-claims court, and either of us may ask a court for an injunction or other equitable relief to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property. Nothing here stops you reporting anything to a government agency.

If arbitration doesn’t apply. Where a dispute is not arbitrated — because you opted out, because it falls in a carve-out, or because arbitration is held unenforceable — it goes to the state or federal courts sitting in Missouri. We both consent to those courts’ personal jurisdiction, agree the venue is proper, and will not argue the forum is inconvenient.

Time limit. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any claim must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred. Where the law that governs a claim does not permit that period to be shortened — as Missouri’s does not — the period the law gives applies instead.

Rights you cannot sign away. Nothing in these terms waives or limits any right you have under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act or any other consumer-protection law that cannot lawfully be waived. Where a term here conflicts with such a right, that right prevails and the remainder of these terms continues in force.

If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, it is limited or severed only as far as necessary and everything else remains in effect.

The rest of the agreement

This is the whole agreement. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and AWO Logistics LLC about Bantu Connect, and they replace anything said before. Nothing on a marketing page or in a conversation changes them.

Doing business electronically. You agree that we can give you notices, agreements, and required disclosures electronically — by email or in the app — and that those have the same effect as paper. Notices to you go to the email address on your account, so keep it current.

Passing this on. You can’t transfer your account or your rights under these terms to someone else. We can transfer ours to a successor if the business is sold or reorganized, and we’ll tell you if that happens.

Letting something slide isn’t giving it up. If we don’t enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.

Things outside anyone’s control. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something we can’t reasonably control — an outage at a provider we depend on, a natural disaster, a war, a pandemic, or a change in the law.

We can change or stop the platform. We may add, change, suspend, or discontinue any part of Bantu Connect — a feature, a section, the whole thing — at any time, and we are not liable to you for doing so. Some features may be offered as previews and may be unreliable or withdrawn without notice.

We are not your partner or your agent. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, franchise, agency, or fiduciary relationship between you and AWO Logistics LLC. Neither of us can bind the other.

Stripe can rely on the payment terms. Stripe is an intended third-party beneficiary of the sections covering payments, fees, refunds, chargebacks, and payouts, and may enforce them. Nobody else gains rights under these terms.

Headings are for reading, not for arguing. Section headings are there to help you find things and don’t affect how any term is interpreted. These terms are written in English, and the English version governs.

What survives. When your account ends, these continue to apply: the licence covering anything still posted, what belongs to us, fees already owed, refunds, chargebacks, the gathering release, the release between members, what we don’t promise, limits on our liability, covering us, the arbitration and dispute section, and this section.