AQLI — Terms of Service

Version 5.5 · 20 October 2026 Applies to aqli.app. Reviewed annually. Next review: September 2027.

Corrected to say exactly what AQLI keeps.

Corrected to state that Ruha Solutions LLC owns AQLI and AQLI Kids.

AQLI Kids, at kids.aqli.app, is a separate application with its own terms.

The rule these terms are built on

AQLI keeps only what you give it to keep: an account if you make one, and what you post or write in its shared rooms. The Privacy Policy lists every item. Everything else stays on your own device. AQLI stands between you and no one: it is a tool a community uses.

This is a rule AQLI is built on, not a description of how it happens to work today. No future version of AQLI may relax it.

Everything below follows from it.

1 · Who runs AQLI

AQLI is operated by Ruha Solutions LLC, a limited liability company registered in the State of Maine, United States.

Ruha Solutions LLC is the company you are dealing with when you use AQLI. It runs AQLI, it is responsible for AQLI, and it answers for it.

These terms are an agreement between you and Ruha Solutions LLC. No individual is a party to them in a personal capacity, and nothing in this document makes anyone personally responsible for AQLI.

AQLI and AQLI Kids are owned and operated by Ruha Solutions LLC, a Maine limited liability company. Ruha Solutions LLC owns both apps under an assignment dated 20 October 2026.

2 · What AQLI is

A digital community center for Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora families: a directory of services verified by real people, a community noticeboard, an Elder Center, learning, wellness support, and financial circles.

It is offered as-is while it grows. Its governance is published in the AQLI Constitution and Architecture Standards.

3 · What AQLI costs

Today, every part of AQLI is free to use. There is no advertising, no advertising network, no tracker, and nothing about you is sold to anyone.

That is true today. It is not a promise about every year that follows, and this document will not pretend otherwise. AQLI is built and maintained by people, and it runs on machines that cost money. A project that cannot pay for itself does not survive long enough to serve anybody. Promising "free forever" and then charging later would be worth less than saying this plainly now.

So here is the arrangement.

These stay free, for everyone, always:

Help is not a paid feature. That is a rule, not a position.

These will never happen, at any price:

These may one day carry a charge: tools built for organizations rather than families, services Ruha Solutions provides directly, and features that cost real money to run. If that day comes, Section 4 says exactly how it will be handled.

Ruha Solutions may earn from AQLI, and that is how AQLI is paid for. It is not paid for by selling anything about you, and it never will be.

4 · If AQLI ever charges for anything

This section is written now, before there is anything to charge for, because a commitment made in advance is worth more than the same commitment made under pressure.

If any part of AQLI carries a price:

  1. It will be said plainly on this page, with a new version number and date, and stated at the top rather than buried in the text.
  2. Nothing you already have will be taken away to make you pay for it. What you have written, recorded, or saved stays yours and stays reachable.
  3. The price, how often you are charged, and when the first charge falls will be shown before you enter any payment details — not after, and not somewhere you have to go looking for.
  4. Nothing recurring will begin without you saying yes to it, in words, on that screen.
  5. Canceling will be at least as easy as starting. If you can subscribe in the app, you can cancel in the app, in the same number of steps, without writing to anyone or explaining yourself.
  6. We will tell you before a renewal, and before any price change, in time for you to decide.
  7. If a payment lapses, your work is not held hostage. You return to the free parts of AQLI with everything you made still there.

These are the standards required of online sellers in the United States, and we intend to meet them whether or not a particular rule is in force on a particular day.

5 · Information, not advice

AQLI publishes information about real services. It is not medical, legal, financial, or immigration advice, and no listing is a recommendation or an endorsement.

Always confirm anything important directly with the organization before relying on it.

In an emergency, contact your local emergency services. In the United States, call 911.

6 · Listings, and what "verified" means

Every published resource carries the name of the steward who verified it, the date, and what they found.

We do not invent listings. If we cannot verify something, it is not published.

A verified mark means a person in this community checked it and signed their name to it. It does not mean AQLI has inspected, approved, endorsed, or guaranteed anyone. AQLI is not a party to your dealings with any business, service, place of worship, or school you find here. What passes between you and them is between you and them.

Details change without telling us. A listing tells you what was true on the date shown. It does not promise what is true today.

If you find something wrong, tell us. Correcting it matters more to us than having a longer list.

7 · Accounts

Accounts are for adults aged 18 and over. There are no accounts for children anywhere in AQLI, in either application.

You are responsible for what you do with your account and for keeping it secure. One person, one account.

You may delete your account at any time, from within the application. When you do, your posts and your private information are removed. Records that must survive for the protection of others — a moderation log, a verification a steward performed — are kept but no longer carry your name.

8 · What you post

Posts appear only after a steward has read them.

Do not post: other people's private information · medical, legal, or financial claims presented as fact · anything that harasses, defrauds, or exploits anyone · anything you would not say at a community gathering with elders and children present.

What you write stays yours. By posting, you allow AQLI to show it to the community and to keep it while it is published. You are not giving anybody ownership of your words, and nobody may sell them or train a machine on them.

Once a post is published it cannot be edited. The version sent is the version a neighbor reads, with your name on it. This is a harder bargain than most places ask for, and it is deliberate: it is what makes a post worth trusting.

We may decline or remove anything that could harm the community, without being obliged to explain. That authority rests with stewards, and it is logged.

9 · Reporting and blocking

Anyone signed in can report a post. A report goes to a steward, and your name is never shown to the person you reported.

You can stop seeing another member. They are not told.

If you are reported, a steward reads the post — not a machine.

10 · Financial circles

AQLI Circles is a ledger, not a bank and not a payment service.

AQLI never holds, moves, or has any access to money. It is not a bank, a credit union, a money transmitter, a payment processor, or a lender, and it is not registered or licensed as any of them.

An እቁብ or an እድር is an agreement between the people in it. AQLI only helps them keep a record of what they have agreed. A circle reflects what its members enter. It does not verify that a payment was made, does not enforce a turn, and does not compel anyone to contribute.

Disputes about money are between the members of a circle. AQLI has no authority over them, takes no part in them, and cannot recover anything.

If you are the treasurer of a circle that is still running, you cannot delete your account until you have handed that role to somebody else — because other people's records depend on you.

11 · The Elder Center

What an elder records belongs to that elder and to their family.

A recording stays on the phone it was made on. AQLI never receives a copy, and nothing is sent to any server. Sharing one is yours to do, through your own phone.

We provide a way to take a copy away in a single file that opens anywhere and needs no account and no AQLI.

Removing a recording. A recording is removed on the phone that holds it: with Remove beside it, or with “Remove everything from this device” in Settings. AQLI holds no copy, so there is nothing for us to remove, and you give us no permission to store or play it, because we never have it. A copy you have sent to someone is theirs to keep or delete.

We will not sell it, license it, or train anything on it. Not now, not under new management, not at any price.

If you believe something in the Elder Center should not exist — because it is yours and you did not agree to it, or because it records someone who did not — it is on the phone of the person who made it, or in a copy they sent. AQLI has none of it, so we cannot take it down; only the person who holds it can delete it.

12 · What is yours, and what is ours

What you make is yours. What you write, record, or save in AQLI belongs to you. We claim no ownership of it and no right to use it beyond showing it where you chose to put it.

The name AQLI, the ዓቕሊ wordmark, the Patience Glass — the hourglass mark — and the original writing, drawings, and code belong to Ruha Solutions LLC.

Community-facing educational content may be shared freely — unmodified, with attribution, for noncommercial community benefit. Teach with it. Print it. Put it on a wall.

You may not present AQLI as your own work, or use its name or mark in a way that suggests a connection, an endorsement, or a partnership that has not been agreed.

Where AQLI carries something that belongs to somebody else — a script, a language, a prayer, a proverb, a custom — it belongs to the people it came from, and not to us. We carry it. We do not own it.

13 · What is stored on your device

Parts of AQLI work without a signal, which means parts of AQLI are kept on your own device rather than on a server.

Clearing your browser's stored data removes them. Deleting the application removes them. A device that is lost or reset takes them with it. We cannot restore what we never held.

Where AQLI offers a way to save something to a file, that file is the copy that outlives the device. We would encourage you to make one.

14 · What you are responsible for

You are responsible for what you do in AQLI: what you post, what you enter into a circle, and how you deal with the people and organizations you find here.

If something you do in AQLI causes a claim against AQLI, Ruha Solutions LLC, or anyone who works on AQLI — for example by posting something unlawful, by entering information you had no right to share, or by using a circle to defraud somebody — the cost of answering that claim falls to you, not to us.

This is not aimed at anyone who makes an honest mistake. It is here because a project of this kind cannot absorb the cost of someone else's deliberate wrongdoing and continue to exist.

15 · Something that isn't yours

Do not post or upload anything you do not have the right to share.

If you believe something in AQLI infringes your rights, write to privacy@aqli.app with enough detail for us to find it and understand the claim. We will take it down while we look into it, and we will tell the person who posted it what has happened and why.

16 · As-is

AQLI is provided as-is and as-available. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that every listing is accurate on the day you read it.

We build it carefully, we test it, and we correct what we find.

17 · Limits of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, AQLI, Ruha Solutions LLC, and Aklil Belay are not liable for loss arising from your use of AQLI or from anything found through it — including work stored on your own device, money in a circle, or anything that follows from a listing.

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

Some places do not allow limits of this kind. Where that is so, these limits apply only as far as that place permits, and the rights you have under the law where you live are unaffected by anything written here.

18 · If AQLI moves, stops, or changes hands

AQLI is not for sale.

If AQLI is ever transferred to another organization, these terms travel with it — and in particular the promises in Sections 3 and 11. Whoever operates AQLI thereafter is bound by them, and any change they make is a change to this document, stated plainly at the top of it.

If AQLI stops being published, what is on your device is unaffected. It does not stop working when we stop.

19 · Changes to these terms

If these terms change, the version number and date above change with them. Any change affecting what you pay, what we collect, or what you may post will be stated plainly at the top of this page — not absorbed into the text.

Every version of these terms is numbered and dated, and earlier versions are kept. If you want to know what a previous version said, ask us and we will send it to you.

The current version always lives at aqli.app/terms.

Continued use after a change means acceptance. If you do not accept a change, you may stop using AQLI, and what is yours remains yours.

20 · Privacy

What AQLI collects, and what it does not, is set out in full in AQLI's Privacy Policy. That document and these terms are read together, and where they appear to differ, the Privacy Policy governs.

21 · If we disagree

Write to us first. Most things can be sorted out by a person reading a message. Send it to privacy@aqli.app, and give us thirty days to put it right before taking it further. We would genuinely rather fix something than argue about it.

If that does not settle it, any dispute goes to the state or federal courts sitting in Maine, United States, and both of us agree that is where it belongs.

Any claim must be brought within one year of the thing that caused it, or not at all.

Where the law where you live gives you rights that cannot be set aside by agreement, those rights stand, and nothing here displaces them — including any right to bring a claim where you live.

22 · The rest of the small print

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maine, United States, without regard to conflict of law rules.

If any part of this document turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of it still stands, and that part applies as far as it lawfully can.

These terms, together with AQLI's Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us. Nothing said in a message, a post, or a conversation adds to them or takes anything away.

If we do not enforce something once, we have not given it up.

We may transfer these terms to whoever operates AQLI next, as described in Section 18. You may not transfer them to anybody else.

In these terms, AQLI means this project and everything published under its name, whoever operates it.

23 · Contact

privacy@aqli.app

Ruha Solutions LLC, a Maine limited liability company, Maine, United States — the company that operates AQLI and is responsible for it.

AQLI was created by Aklil Belay. AQLI and AQLI Kids are owned and operated by Ruha Solutions LLC, a Maine limited liability company.