Terms of Service

1. This agreement

These terms are between you and African Women in Media (“AWiM”, “we”), who operate SourceHer. By creating an account or booking a session you accept them. Our Privacy Policy forms part of this agreement.

2. What SourceHer is — and is not

SourceHer is a marketplace. Experts list their own expertise, set their own rates and control their own availability. Journalists book and pay through the platform. The session itself is between those two people.

3. Accounts

• Give accurate information when you register, and keep it current. Misrepresenting who you are, or who you write for, is grounds for removal.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Keep your password to yourself and tell us if you think someone else has it.
• Expert accounts are reviewed by the AWiM team before the profile becomes public — credentials, publication history and at least one professional reference. Approval usually takes two working days, and we may decline.
• You must be 18 or over.

4. If you are an expert

• Describe your expertise honestly. State what you can speak to, and say plainly when a question falls outside it rather than answering anyway.
• Keep your availability accurate. A slot on your profile is an offer, and someone will pay for it.
• Respond to booking requests. You may accept or decline any request, but leaving one unanswered wastes a journalist's deadline — accept or decline within two working days.
• Turn up to sessions you have accepted, on time, and honour the turnaround you state for written work.
• Agree the terms of attribution with the journalist before you speak — on the record, on background, or not for attribution.
• You are responsible for your own tax and any professional obligations attaching to what you say.

5. If you are booking

• Brief honestly. Say what the story is, what you need, and what your deadline is. An expert decides whether to accept on the strength of that brief.
• Respect the attribution you agreed. If something was said on background, it stays on background.
• Do not record a session without the expert's express consent.
• Book the time you need. Turning up late, or overrunning, takes time the expert has not sold you.
• Do not use the platform to source anything you would not be willing to tell the expert you are sourcing.

6. Prices and payment

• Experts set their own prices, stated in US dollars on their rate card. There are no hidden charges — the total, including our fee, is shown before you pay.
• AWiM charges a platform fee of 8% on top of the expert’s price. That fee funds running the platform and the review process behind it.
• Payment is taken at checkout through Paystack. Your card may be charged in a currency other than US dollars, at the conversion rate shown to you before you confirm; that rate is stated on the checkout page and is what you agree to.
• Money is held, not passed straight on. AWiM holds the funds and releases them to the expert once the session is marked complete. This is what protects both sides.
• Booking a slot holds it. If checkout is not completed, the hold expires and the slot returns to the expert's availability.

7. Cancellations and refunds

• You may reschedule free of charge up to 24 hours before a session. Inside 24 hours it is at the expert's discretion.
• If an expert declines or cancels a booking, you are refunded in full.
• If you cancel a booking you made, you are refunded in accordance with the 24-hour line above.
• Refunds go back through Paystack to the card you paid with, in the currency you were charged. Paystack settles refunds asynchronously — expect a few working days for the money to land, and your bookings page will show the refund while it is on its way.
• A charge can be refunded in part as well as in full — for a session that was cut short, for example.
• Once money has been released to an expert for a completed session, reversing it is an escalation, not an automatic right. Contact us and we will look at it.

8. Meetings and Google Meet

When an expert accepts a booking for a live session, we create a calendar event carrying a Google Meet link and invite both of you. Where the expert has connected their own Google account the event sits on their calendar; otherwise AWiM hosts it. Written commissions have a turnaround rather than a meeting, and get no video link.

Google Meet is Google’s service, provided under Google’s terms, and we do not control its availability. If a link fails you are welcome to meet another way — the booking and the payment are unaffected. What the Google connection can and cannot see is set out in our Privacy Policy.

9. Reviews

You may leave one review per completed session, and only for a session you actually booked. Reviews are published under your name on the expert’s profile and count towards their rating.

Write about the session. We remove reviews that are abusive, that disclose confidential material from the session, that are not about the work, or that are left in exchange for anything.

10. Acceptable use

Do not:

• harass, threaten or abuse anyone on the platform;
• misrepresent your identity, employer or credentials;
• arrange a session through SourceHer and then take the payment off-platform to avoid the fee;
• scrape the directory, or use the expert listings to build a mailing list;
• attempt to access accounts, data or systems that are not yours;
• use SourceHer to source material for harassment, or to target someone privately.

11. Your content

What you write stays yours — your profile, your briefs, your messages, your reviews. You give AWiM permission to store and display that content where the platform needs to show it: your profile in the directory, your brief to the expert you booked, your review on their page.

What an expert says in a session belongs to them, and your right to publish it is the one you agreed with them. SourceHer does not grant you rights over it.

12. Suspension and closing your account

You can stop using SourceHer whenever you like and ask us to close your account. We may suspend or remove an account that breaks these terms, that is used fraudulently, or where we are required to. Where a suspension affects money already paid, we will resolve that fairly — a suspension is not a way for us to keep funds.

13. What we do not promise

We think it is more useful to be plain about this than to bury it. AWiM does not warrant that an expert will be right for your story, that their opinion is correct, or that a session will produce something publishable. We verify who someone is; we do not fact-check what they say, and their statements are their own.

The platform is provided as it is. We work to keep it available and accurate, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free.

14. Liability

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Subject to that, AWiM is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost profits, or for editorial consequences arising from a story. Where we are liable, our total liability in connection with a booking is limited to the amount paid for that booking.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top always says when. If a change materially affects your rights — pricing, refunds, or what you may do on the platform — we will tell account holders directly, and it will not apply retroactively to a booking already made.

16. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya, and disputes are subject to the courts of Kenya. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of protections you have under the law of the country you live in.