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Terms of Use

By accessing or using SereneMind's website, the SHIFT program, or the SereneMind app, you agree to these Terms of Use. If you do not agree, please do not create an account or use these services. These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia, Canada.

Age requirement

You must be 16 years of age or older to create an account and participate in the SHIFT program. By registering, you confirm you meet this requirement. If we become aware that a user is under 16, we will immediately close the account and delete associated data. We do not currently offer a parent or guardian consent pathway for users under 16.

Pilot project status

Parts of the SereneMind service are still in a pre-launch pilot phase. During this phase:

• The app is provided "as-is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind
• The app may contain bugs, experience downtime, or undergo changes without advance notice
• Features, pricing, and program structure may change during or after the pilot
• In the unlikely event of a technical failure, data may be lost — we encourage you to keep personal records of anything important to you

Pilot status does not mean everything is free. Grant-funded SHIFT cohorts are delivered at no cost to participants, and some participants receive complimentary app access during a cohort. Paid app subscriptions, Wellness Circle membership, and one-to-one sessions are live commercial services and the payment terms below apply to them in full.

Your account

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Please notify us immediately at ajkaur@serenemindcalm.org if you believe your account has been compromised.

Acceptable use

By using the app and SHIFT program, you agree that you will not:

• Attempt to access, hack, disrupt, or compromise our app, database, or infrastructure
• Use the app to harass, bully, threaten, or harm other users or any person
• Create fake accounts or impersonate any other person or organisation
• Upload or share content that is unlawful, harmful, discriminatory, or violates anyone's rights
• Post another person's personal information in any community space
• Use the app for any commercial purpose without our prior written consent
• Attempt to reverse-engineer, copy, or reproduce any part of the app's code, design, or curriculum
• Share your account credentials with others

Violation of these rules will result in immediate account suspension or termination.

The Serene AI coach

NEW

Serene is an optional AI chat feature. Before you can send it a message, the app shows you a separate consent screen explaining that your messages are processed by OpenAI in the United States, that they are not used to train AI models, and that we do not store them. You must accept that notice to use the feature, and you can use the rest of the app without ever doing so.

• Serene is not a therapist, counsellor, doctor, or crisis service, and nothing it says is medical or professional advice
• AI-generated responses may be inaccurate, incomplete, or inappropriate for your situation, and you use them at your own discretion
• Do not enter your full name, address, government identifiers, payment details, or another person's personal information
• Do not use Serene to attempt to extract our instruction prompts, to generate harmful or unlawful content, or to abuse the underlying service
• We may suspend access to the feature, or discontinue it entirely, at any time

Community spaces and peer support

NEW

The app includes circles, a community forum, shared toolkits, and Heart Connection. These are shared spaces and they work differently from the private parts of the app.

• What you post is visible to others. Content you post to a circle, the forum, or a shared toolkit can be read by other members of that space and by SereneMind administrators. It is not private and it is not encrypted. Do not post anything you would not want another participant to read.
• You keep ownership; you grant us a licence to display it. By posting, you grant SereneMind a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, and display that content within the service for as long as you keep it posted.
• Respect other people's privacy. Do not post names, contact details, photographs, or identifying stories about anyone other than yourself. What is shared in a circle stays in the circle.
• Heart Connection releases your email to a volunteer. If you submit a peer support request, the contact email you provide is given to the trained volunteer who accepts it, so they can reach you. Do not submit a request if you are not comfortable with that.
• Volunteers and peers are not professionals. They are community members offering peer support, not counsellors, and SereneMind is not responsible for advice given by one participant to another.
• We have no obligation to monitor. We do not review community content before it is posted and we do not watch these spaces in real time. We may, but are not required to, remove content, close a thread, or suspend an account at our discretion and without notice.
• Reporting. If you see content that breaches these terms, report it in the app or email ajkaur@serenemindcalm.org.

Access through an employer or partner organisation

NEW

If your access is sponsored by an employer, health authority, school, or nonprofit partner, these additional terms apply.

• Your account is yours, not your employer's. Your organisation cannot access, transfer, suspend, or delete your account, and cannot request a copy of your personal data from us. We will refuse such requests.
• Your organisation sees aggregate reporting only — participation counts, grouped mood bands, completion rates, and survey averages that are withheld entirely until at least five people in that organisation have responded. It never sees your journal entries, individual mood, AI conversations, community posts, or whether you personally logged in. This is set out in full in our Privacy Policy.
• Participation is voluntary. Using SereneMind is not a condition of employment, and we will not provide your organisation with anything that could be used for performance management or discipline.
• If sponsorship ends — because you leave the organisation or the contract ends — we will give you reasonable notice and the option to continue on a personal plan or to delete your account. Your content is not handed to the organisation in either case.

Intellectual property

SereneMind Consulting Inc. owns all intellectual property associated with this app and the SHIFT program, including the app design and code, SHIFT curriculum and facilitation materials, all branding and visual identity, and all written content. You are granted a limited, personal, non-transferable licence to use the app for your own personal wellness purposes only.

Your content

You own your journal entries, reflections, mood check-ins, and all other personal content you enter into the app. By using the app, you grant SereneMind a limited, non-exclusive licence to host, store, and process your content solely to provide the service to you. We do not use your private content for any other purpose. For testimonials you explicitly consent to share, you grant us a licence to publish that content as described in our Privacy Policy, with a right of withdrawal at any time.

Payments, refunds and cancellation

Grant-funded SHIFT cohorts are delivered free to participants. For paid app plans, Wellness Circle membership, and one-to-one sessions:

• All payments are processed securely through Stripe — we do not store your payment details
• Prices are displayed in Canadian dollars and are inclusive of any applicable taxes
• To cancel a monthly subscription, email our Privacy Officer at ajkaur@serenemindcalm.org from the address on your account, or use the cancellation link in your Stripe receipt. We will action your cancellation within 10 days of receiving your request and confirm it by email. Self-service cancellation from within the app is not available yet; until it is, this is the method that works and we will honour the date you asked, not the date we processed it.
• After cancellation, access continues until the end of the billing period you have already paid for. We do not pro-rate a partial month, but we will not charge you again
• If a payment is taken after you asked to cancel, we refund it in full
• If we shut down the app or your plan during a paid billing period, we will provide a pro-rated refund for unused time
• Refund requests for other circumstances are considered case by case — contact ajkaur@serenemindcalm.org
• We reserve the right to change pricing with 30 days' notice to active subscribers. Founding-rate subscribers keep their rate for as long as their subscription runs without interruption
• One-to-one sessions may be rescheduled or cancelled with at least 24 hours' notice for a full refund; later than that, the session fee is retained

Limitation of liability — please read carefully

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless SereneMind Consulting Inc., its directors, facilitators, and volunteers from any claim, loss, or expense arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the service, content you post in community spaces, or your infringement of anyone else's rights. This does not apply to anything caused by our own negligence or breach.

Third-party services and links

The service relies on third-party providers listed in our Privacy Policy, and our website and app link to third-party sites such as Stripe and Calendly. We do not control those services and are not responsible for their content, availability, or practices. Your use of them is governed by their own terms.

Ending your account

You may delete your account at any time from inside the app: Settings → Delete My Data & Account → "Yes, delete everything". Deletion is immediate and permanent — your account and personal data are removed from our active systems straight away, with residual backup copies purging within 90 days. There is no recovery window, so export anything you want to keep first. You can also email us and we will do it for you.

Separately, if you do not log in for 12 months, your personal content is automatically deleted while your account itself stays open.

Where reasonably possible, we will give advance notice before suspending or closing your account. If we shut down the app entirely, we will provide at least 30 days' notice and a pro-rated refund for any unused paid plan period.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting a notice in the app or by email. Continued use of our services after the effective date of changes means you accept the updated terms.

Dispute resolution

In the event of a dispute, both parties agree to first attempt resolution through good-faith discussion. If unresolved within 30 days, disputes may be referred to mediation in British Columbia as a voluntary step before formal legal proceedings. This does not prevent either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief or pursuing a claim through Small Claims Court where eligible. These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia.

General

• Severability — if any provision is found invalid or unenforceable under BC law, the remaining provisions continue in full force and effect
• No waiver — if we do not enforce a provision on one occasion, that does not waive our right to enforce it later
• Assignment — you may not transfer your account or these terms to anyone else. We may assign these terms to a successor in the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you
• Force majeure — neither party is liable for failure to perform caused by events beyond reasonable control, including outages at our hosting or payment providers, natural disasters, or governmental action
• Entire agreement — these terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Disclaimer, form the entire agreement between you and SereneMind regarding the service

Contact

SereneMind Consulting Inc. · British Columbia, Canada · ajkaur@serenemindcalm.org · 604-723-1920