Privacy policy
Village Africa is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and your personal data is processed in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 (as applicable). This privacy policy (also known as a privacy notice) sets out how Village Africa collects, uses and protects any personal information that you give us.
Village Africa may change the terms of this statement so please check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. The date of the current version is set out at the end of this notice.
If you have any queries about this policy or our privacy practices, please contact info@villageafrica.org.uk or write to Village Africa, 138 Belgrave Road, London E11 3QR, UK.
Why are we allowed to process your personal information?
Organisations are permitted to process data if they have a legal basis for doing so. Village Africa processes data on the basis that:
- Express and informed consent has been given by the person whose data is being processed; and/or
- Village Africa has a legitimate interest in processing data (which is when we have a business or commercial reason to process the personal data which needs to be balanced with the individual’s interests i.e. what is right and best for you); and/or
- It is necessary in relation to a contract or agreement which the person has entered into or because the person has asked for something to be done so they can enter into a contract or agreement; and/or
- There is a legal obligation on Village Africa to process data; and/or
- It is necessary to protect the person’s vital interests (a life or death situation).
Where we are relying solely on consent as the basis for processing data, you can modify or withdraw this consent at any time by notifying us in writing, although this may affect the extent to which we are able to provide services to or interact with you in future.
How do we collect information?
We may obtain personal information from you whenever you interact with us, such as when you enquire about our activities, register with us, send or receive information, make a donation to us, join our child sponsorship scheme, ask to visit our project or engage with our social media.
We may also receive information about you when you interact with third parties with whom we work. For example, where you have made a donation to us through a third-party website (e.g. JustGiving) and have given them permission to share your information with us.
We may source data from third parties or via third parties (e.g. the Land Registry) in order to keep your details up-to-date. Criminal records checks may also be carried out in certain limited circumstances (e.g. prior to being accepted to work as a volunteer or trustee), but your express consent will be sought to this.
What information do we collect?
We collect the data necessary for Village Africa to pursue its charitable objectives and activities, including but not limited to the implementation of its humanitarian work, working with volunteers and arranging stays for visitors, fundraising and marketing, running events, keeping our supporters informed of our activities and the effective running of Village Africa through its staff, trustees and volunteers. Data collected and processed may include, but not be limited to:
- Names and contact information such as telephone numbers, email and postal addresses
- In respect of volunteers and visitors, other relevant personal data such as dietary requirements, medical information and criminal record declarations
- On occasion, photographs (for example, of visitors at our project in Tanzania)
- Donor and volunteer records and preferences, including, where necessary, bank or payment details in order to process payments from you and information about your tax status for the collection of Gift Aid
- Employer details for processing a payroll gift
- Such other information that is relevant and necessary for Village Africa to carry out its activities, charitable purposes and legal obligations.
As mentioned above, in limited cases, we may collect sensitive personal data about you, such as health information. We would only collect sensitive personal data if there is a clear reason for doing so, such as where we need to know this information for your safety and wellbeing during a volunteer placement or a visit to our project in Tanzania.
How is your information used?
We may use your information to:
- Provide you with the services, products or information you have requested
- Process a donation that you have made and thank you for donations received
- Send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include email mailings about Village Africa’s news and fundraising activities (which may be sent through an automated email platform, such as that provided by MailChimp)
- Carry out internal record keeping, including to create a supporter record for you if you make a donation
- Make a gift aid claim, where applicable
- Deal with enquiries, requests and complaints
- Notify you about changes to our services or policies
- Communicate matters of specific interest to you
- Comply with our legal obligations policies and procedures
- Further our charitable aims, including for fundraising activities
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties, and we will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
We may disclose your personal information if we are requested or required to do so by a regulator or law enforcement or in order to enforce or apply our rights or to protect Village Africa, for example in cases of suspected fraud or defamation, or in order to comply with any other applicable legal obligation.
How is your information stored?
Your personal data may be stored in paper or electronic format or in software systems.
Marketing – Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: info@villageafrica.org.uk or by writing to: Village Africa, 138 Belgrave Road, London E11 3QR, UK.
If you actively provide your consent to us along with your email address, we may contact you for marketing purposes by email. We currently use Intuit Inc (trading as MailChimp’s) email marketing tool for sending email mailings and obtaining subscriber preferences (including “opt outs”). Consequently, your personal data will be transferred to MailChimp to enable us to create and use distribution lists and to send marketing email campaigns. MailChimp provides us with a report informing us of open and click rates after each mail shot campaign. It also tells us who has unsubscribed and why, plus whether any emails have “bounced”. Please note that MailChimp may transfer personal data to certain of its sub-processors (for example, to help MailChimp prevent abuse and provide support to customers).
If you have provided us with your postal address or telephone number we may send you direct mail or telephone you about our work unless you have told us that you would prefer not to receive such information or we receive a notification from the Fundraising Preference Service that you have requested marketing communications to stop. We seldom use these two methods of communication for marketing purposes.
If you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, we will maintain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you for such purposes.
How you can access and update your information
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you and have any inaccuracies in your information corrected. If you wish to exercise these rights, please email us at: info@villageafrica.org.uk.
The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or any of the other information we hold for you becomes inaccurate or out of date, please contact us as set out above.
Protecting and retaining personal information
We take appropriate measures to ensure that the personal information disclosed to us is kept secure, accurate and up to date and kept only for so long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is used. Please note that we are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). Where we are not under a legal obligation to retain your information, we will determine what is necessary by reference to the lawful basis for processing set out above and our legitimate interests.
Sharing data outside the EEA
Because Village Africa operates in Tanzania and its staff/volunteers carry out various administrative and fundraising activities from there, we may need to transfer, store or process your data outside of the European Economic Area. Tanzania does not have the same data protection laws, but we will handle your data with care in the same way as we would when processing it in the UK.
Further, please be aware that MailChimp is a USA company and therefore the data we transfer to them will be transferred, stored or processed outside the European Economic Area. MailChimp has contractually committed to transfer and process all of its users’ Swiss, EU and UK data in compliance with the EU’s Standard Contractual Clauses and it ensures that its contracts with third party vendors are also GDPR-compliant. MailChimp also annually certifies its compliance with the EU-U.S./Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks and continues to protect EEA, UK and Swiss data in compliance with the Privacy Shield Principles. It has implemented technical and organisational measures to safeguard against unauthorised access to user data. Further information can be found here: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/ and https://mailchimp.com/gdpr/
Your rights
You have certain rights regarding your personal information. These include the rights to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and receipt of your personal information in a usable electronic format and to transmit it to a third party (right to portability).
If you have questions or concerns regarding the way in which your personal information has been used, please contact: info@villageafrica.org.uk or write to Village Africa, 138 Belgrave Road, London E11 3QR, UK
We are committed to working with you to obtain a fair resolution of any complaint or concern about privacy. If, however, you believe that we have not been able to assist with your complaint or concern, you have the right to make a complaint to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.
Cookies and anonymous data
We may collect and record information in order for us to understand more about how our website is used and in turn make sure the site reflects your needs. To do this we may send cookies to your PC. A cookie is a small file that contains information that allows us to recognise that you have used the site before, but will not contain any personal data.
By browsing our site, you are accepting our use of cookies. If you do not want cookies to be stored on your PC it is possible to disable this function within your browser settings without affecting your navigation around the site. Please see further our cookie policy: https://villageafrica.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/policy/cookie-policy/
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
This policy was last updated on 16 January 2022.
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