Privacy Policy

GDPR and the Himalayan Education Lifeline Programme

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive European data protection law that came into effect May 25, 2018. It creates consistent data protection rules across Europe and applies to companies based in the EU as well as global companies who process personal data about EU individuals.

We are committed to protecting your personal data and want to tell you how we use it and take care of it.

Data protection and privacy statement

The Himalayan Education Lifeline Programme (HELP) is committed to safeguarding your privacy online. This statement explains how we will collect, use and disclose information. This statement may change from time to time, so please check this page periodically.

• What information we collect
• Why we collect information
• Where we collect information from
• How long we keep your information for
• Who we share your personal information with
• How your information is secure
• Cookies
• Further information
• Managing your communications from us

It’s important that you feel completely comfortable and confident that your personal information is in safe hands. HELP takes protecting your privacy extremely seriously and takes all reasonable steps to ensure your information is secure.

The use of your personal information, why we collect it and what we save varies depending on how you interact with HELP, what consent you have given us and what the situation is. We have done our best to indicate this throughout the statement. There may be other privacy policies that apply to certain services we provide. We will make these explicit when they apply. Please read them before you subscribe for such services.

What information we collect

We may collect a variety of personally identifiable or sensitive information from you for various reasons. For example, we may collect:

• Any personal details you may choose to give us, such as your name, age, or address. We save this so we can keep in touch with you.
• Your financial details,if you have made a kind donation to us. We need this to process your gift and/or Gift Aid.
• Your education and employment background,in order to process your application if you have applied to work with HELP.
• Any equal opportunity data, or physical or mental health information that you may have given us if you apply to volunteer with HELP. This is so we can fully and fairly administer your application.
• Email marketing messages that we send may contain tracking beacons / tracked clickable links or similar server technologies in order to track subscriber activity within email marketing messages. Where used, such marketing messages may record a range of data such as; times, dates, I.P addresses, opens, clicks, forwards, geographic and demographic data. Such data, within its limitations will show the activity each subscriber made for that email campaign. Any email marketing messages we send are in accordance with the GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). We provide you with an easy method to withdraw your consent (unsubscribe) or manage your preferences / the information we hold about you at any time. See any marketing message for instructions on how to unsubscribe or manage your preferences.

Why we collect information

Information helps make the fight against poverty possible. Whenever you interact or communicate with us, we collect personal information. This information allows us to function and become more efficient. Some examples may include:

• Processing volunteer. Your personal and sensitive information allows us to communicate with you and assess your suitability for the role.
• Continuously improving. We value any feedback, including complaints, you may have. In order to increase the impact we make and improve the service we provide to you and others, we need to communicate with you and collect personal information.
• So we can communicate with you in the ways that suit you best, we may create a profile of your interests, preferences and support. Creating profiles allows us to target our resources effectively, which our supporters tell us is a key priority. We may use additional information which is publicly available such as where you live or your age. This helps us make the right requests to the right people; for example, leaving a gift in your Will.

Being able to communicate with you is highly important to us, as your support can help transform the lives of poor communities in the Himalayas.

We would like to use the personal details you provide us to communicate with you about the impact you make and to give you our news. We may also let you know about other ways you could help us – whether that’s through fundraising, campaigning, events, volunteering, trading activities or educational activities. We will always ask for your consent if we want to message you by email or text message; however, we do not normally ask for consent to make calls or to write to you if you are a supporter or volunteer because we have a legitimate interest to contact you, provided of course that this does not breach your fundamental rights.

When you give us your details we will always tell you what we are going to do with them. If we request your contact details for any reason, you will always have an option to not give us them or to opt out. It is always your choice and you can change your mind at any time by contacting us.

Where we collect information from

Examples may include:

• From you directly, for example, when you fill out one of our volunteer applications or when you make a donation (thank you!).
• From external sources, for example, when you create a JustGiving page or when you interact with us on social media.
• From other organisations, when you give permission or where your personal data is available publicly. For example, if you have moved house but forgotten to tell us, we may use the Post Office’s National Change of Address database to update our records. By using these sources of information, we can ensure that our letters get to you and that the information you receive from us is relevant.
• From our website, when you visit. For example, we use software such as Google Analytics to identify which pages on our website are visited most. This information is collected automatically. It does not contain any personal or sensitive information, so browsing is anonymous. For information on this, and the use of cookies, please see below.

How long we keep your information for

We keep personal information for different lengths of time dependent on the purpose. For example, we would like to keep volunteer information beyond the length of a placement so we can keep in touch about our work, continue our relationship together and give volunteers the opportunity to leave a gift in their Will.

We want to ensure that the personal information we collect from you is used to appropriately support our work together and considers any future dealings that you would like to have with us. For example, many people ask to receive references for their volunteer work. In these cases it is important we have the correct personal information on file. You can contact us at any time to ask us to remove or amend your personal information.

Who we share your personal information with

If you apply to volunteer or work for HELP, we may use your personal information to run checks against official sanctions lists, which contain details of known terrorist individuals and entities (e.g. UN Sanctions). This ensures that HELP is not complicit in funding or supporting terrorism.

We may also need to disclose your details if required to by the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisers.

We never sell your personal details to third parties for the purpose of marketing. Sometimes we may need to share your information with external organisations. Whenever we share or transfer your personal information, we comply with the standards set by the GDPR and this privacy statement at a minimum.

How your information is secure

The security of your information is of utmost importance to us. We seek to use reasonable measures to protect your information as required by the law, in line with industry standards and in accordance with the policies HELP has set. Sensitive data is held under strict security conditions. If you have any reason to believe that any personal information we hold is no longer secure, please contact us immediately.

Cookies

We use cookies to  provide you with a better user experience. We do this by placing a small text file on your device / computer hard drive to track how you use the website, to record or log whether you have seen particular messages that we display, to keep you logged into the website where applicable, or to display content.

We do not use any cookies containing any personal information (such as your name, email address, etc). Where cookies are used to identify you (when logging in), they do so with an automatically generated string of random letters and numbers (known as a session ID).

Our cookies fall into two main types: ‘strictly necessary’ cookies, without which we could not provide functionality directly requested by the user (such as the volunteer application form), and ‘performance cookies’, used to improve our site.

A more detailed breakdown of cookies created by our website is provided below.

How to disable cookies

If you would prefer not to receive any cookies from us you can configure your browser to reject them. Where your browser is configured to accept cookies we shall take this as consent to use cookies as outlined in this document. Please note that blocking cookies may result in parts of our website no longer functioning properly for you.

For information on how to change your browser’s cookie settings, please refer to aboutcookies.org.

Our cookies

Google Analytics

These cookies are set by Google Analytics. Data from Google Analytics is used on an aggregate, rather than individual, level to improve our site (e.g. streamlining or signposting a user journey which shows high drop-off). They therefore count as “Performance cookies”. Further information on GA cookies can be found at: www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

Google Analytics does not collect personal information.

Adaptive Images

A cookie is set to let us anonymously track the size of the device you are viewing the website with. It does not contain any personal information and is used only to determine the resolution of images to serve you.

Third party cookies

Where we have content embedded from third-party sites (such as Facebook and Youtube), those sites may set their own cookies. The contents and lifespan of these cookies are not under our control. Please visit these sites for further information on their privacy and cookie policies, or visit aboutcookies.org for general information on controlling or disabling cookies.

Further information

The laws that say how your personal information can be used are:

• The Data Protection Act 1998
• The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003
• The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Managing your communications from us

You have the right to know what personal information we have about you, to make changes to how you hear from us, and to ask us to stop processing or to remove your personal information. You also have the right to ask for a copy of the information we have.

You can change your communication preferences at any time; just get in touch with us:

Himalayan Education Lifeline Programme
30 Kingsdown Park, Whitstable, Kent CT5 2DF
jim.coleman@help-education.org
+44 (0)1227 263055