Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

  1. This policy sets out how the Student Volunteer Army Charitable Trust will collect, use, disclose and protect your personal information.
  2. All personal information is held in accordance with the requirements of both the New Zealand and Australian Privacy Acts (New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 and Australian Privacy Act 1988).
  3. By using our Website, our App, or our Services, you are deemed to have accepted the terms set out in this Policy.

DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATION

  1. In this Policy: 4.1 App means the Student Volunteer Army Charitable Trust application and web application owned, licensed and/or operated by us and/or any third parties on our behalf, whether currently existing or developed in the future, including the web portals and mobile portals; 4.2 Non-Identifiable Information means data that cannot be used on its own to trace or identify an individual; 4.3 Personal Information means information about an identifiable individual (a natural person); 4.4 SVA Service Award Participant means any person who is participating in the SVA Service Award program, which includes anyone and everyone who has signed up to the app; 4.5 Services means all services we provide from time to time, and includes our information sharing, information viewing, back office, support and training services and software, and the website; 4.6 SVA Clubs Participant means any person who has signed up to an SVA Club either by selecting a club when signing up on the app or by signing up to the local SVA Club on an alternate sign up form; 4.7 Website means the website at the domain "www.sva.org.nz" or any other website operated by us; and 4.8 We, us or our means Student Volunteer Army Charitable Trust and its associated persons.

PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT

  1. We may collect personal information and non-identifiable information from you. In the case of: 5.1 SVA Service Award Participants, we may collect information, including but not limited to your name, age, email address, telephone numbers, and the name of the School you attend; and 5.2 SVA Clubs Participants, we may collect information, including but not limited to your student name, student ID number, age, email address, telephone numbers, nationality, degree, major or hall of residence and the name of the University you attend.
  2. We may collect information under clause 5 when you use the App, attend a Student Volunteer Army Charitable Trust event, subscribe to our publications or otherwise communicate and correspond with us.
  3. We may collect personal information from the following third parties: 7.1 School Kit (Ministry of Done Ltd); and 7.2 in the case of SVA Service Award Participants who are registered under a school, your school key teacher.
  4. The personal information we collect under clause 7 will be limited to: 8.1 name; 8.2 date of birth; 8.3 location; 8.4 driver's licence number, where it is necessary to verify your legal right to drive in connection with a volunteering activity; 8.5 email address; 8.6 phone number; 8.7 school or university name; and 8.8 emergency contact person's details.

COLLECTION OF INFORMATION FROM MINORS

  1. We recognise that a significant portion of our participants are under the age of 18 (minors). We have heightened internal policies to protect the privacy of minors and we take additional care when collecting, using and storing their personal information.
  2. Where a participant is a minor, we require consent from a parent or guardian before personal information is collected or processed. Schools enrolling students are responsible for ensuring appropriate consent is in place in accordance with their own obligations.
  3. We will not use or disclose personal information about a minor for any purpose other than the operation of the SVA Service Award programme and the delivery of related services, unless required by law.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

  1. We may use your personal information to: 12.1 register your membership; 12.2 verify your identity; 12.3 sign you into events in order to keep a record of events attended and hours volunteered for the purposes of your Summary of Service; 12.4 inform you of our events or club activities, including contacting you electronically (e.g. by the App, by text or email for this purpose); 12.5 gather information for an event you have signed up for in order to make the event more enjoyable for you, including but not limited to being able to cater to your dietary requirements; 12.6 ensure your safety at events including being aware of your specific medical requirements and using your contact details to ensure you are safe; 12.7 improve the services and products that we provide to you, through surveys or other feedback options; 12.8 respond to communications from you; 12.9 conduct research and produce statistical analysis relating to the demographics of our members; 12.10 assist in generating your Summary of Service for your logged activities — see clause 17 below for further details on how this works; and 12.11 protect and/or enforce our legal rights and interests, including defending any claim, or for any other purpose authorised by you or the Act.
  2. We only use the personal information we collect for the purposes specified above and will not retain your personal information longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or as otherwise required by law.
  3. You will receive emails from us unless you opt-out of receiving them. You may opt-out at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in each email.
  4. Where you use the App, you will receive push notifications unless you opt-out of receiving them. You may opt-out at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the App.

ACCESS BY SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS

  1. If you register as a participant under a specific school, your registered school and its nominated key teacher(s) will have access to your student volunteering data, including all information recorded in the App in connection with your SVA Service Award participation. This is to enable your school to support, verify and recognise your volunteering.
  2. If you register under SVA General as your institution (i.e. you do not nominate a specific school), no teacher or school will be able to access any information about you. Your data will be held exclusively by us and will not be visible to any educational institution.
  3. You may contact us at hello@sva.org.nz if you have questions about how your registration category affects access to your information.

AUTOMATED ASSISTANCE AND SUMMARY OF SERVICE

  1. When you log your volunteering activities, you may submit free-text entries describing what you did and what you learned. These specific fields only are securely processed via the enterprise API of a third-party AI provider (currently OpenAI, located in the United States) for the sole purposes of correcting spelling and assisting in generating your Summary of Service.
  2. No other personal information — including your name, contact details, school, or date of birth — is shared with the AI provider.
  3. We have strict contractual agreements in place with our AI provider, including a Zero Data Retention policy. Your data is processed and immediately deleted by the provider, and is never stored, used to train, or used to improve their public AI models.
  4. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that any AI provider we engage complies with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and maintains comparable safeguards to those required under New Zealand law, including any applicable cross-border data transfer obligations.

DISCLOSING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

  1. We will not disclose your personal information to third parties without your express consent, except as set out in this Policy. 23.1 An external organisation that is listing projects on the SVA App may see your first name and email address and contact you directly regarding their event if you have signed up to that event directly.
  2. We share personal information with operational partners, including School Kit (Ministry of Done Ltd), who assist us in delivering our services. These partners are bound by contract to us and are not permitted to share your information further or use it for any purpose other than delivering services on our behalf.
  3. We reserve the right to disclose your name, type of volunteering, hours volunteered and school to relevant parties for the purpose of verifying the accuracy of your volunteering records.
  4. We may disclose non-identifiable information to: 26.1 our research partners, the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for the recording of New Zealand's contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, International Association of Volunteering Effort and Volunteering New Zealand, for the purposes of understanding and advancing volunteerism; 26.2 any person to whom we are required by law to disclose that information; or 26.3 any other person authorised by you.

ACCESSING AND CORRECTING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

  1. You have the right to access your personal information and to request a correction to your personal information if you believe it is wrong by emailing us at hello@sva.org.nz. Your email should provide evidence of who you are and set out the details of your request (e.g. the personal information, or the correction that you are requesting). We will respond to all legitimate requests within a reasonable time period.
  2. We may charge you our reasonable costs of providing you with copies of your personal information.

PROTECTING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

  1. We will use all reasonable security safeguards that are appropriate in the circumstances to keep your personal information safe and secure from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, alteration or destruction.
  2. While we take reasonable steps to maintain secure internet connections, if you provide us with personal information over the internet, the provision of that information is at your own risk.
  3. If you follow a link on our website http://sva.org.nz to another site, the owner of that site may have its own privacy policy relating to your personal information. We suggest you review that site's privacy policy before you provide personal information.
  4. We use cookies (an alphanumeric identifier that we transfer to your computer's hard drive so that we can recognise your browser) to monitor your use of the website. You may disable cookies by changing the settings on your browser, although this may mean that you cannot use all of the features of the website.

DATA BREACH NOTIFICATION

  1. We are committed to meeting our obligations under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (Part 6 — Notifiable Privacy Breaches) and the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Part IIIC — Notifiable Data Breaches scheme).
  2. In the event of a privacy breach that is likely to cause serious harm to affected individuals, we will notify the relevant Privacy Commissioner(s) and affected individuals as soon as practicable.
  3. We maintain internal processes to assess, contain and respond to privacy breaches in a timely manner.

WHERE YOU DON'T PROVIDE YOUR INFORMATION

  1. We reserve the right to deny your involvement in our events where you refuse to provide us with your personal information.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

  1. We reserve the right, at our discretion, to alter this privacy policy at any time by uploading a revised policy onto our website. Changes to this privacy policy will take effect immediately once they are published on our website. Please check this privacy policy regularly for modifications and updates. If you continue to use our website or if you provide any personal information after we post changes to this privacy policy, this will indicate your acceptance of any such changes.

HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US

  1. For further information about this Policy, our privacy practices, or to make a request or complaint, please contact us using the details set out below: Student Volunteer Army Charitable Trust Email: hello@sva.org.nz
  2. When making a request or complaint, please include your name, email address and/or telephone number and clearly describe your request or complaint. We will acknowledge your communication and may ask you to verify your identity.
  3. We will respond to you regarding your request or complaint within a reasonable period of time. If you believe we have failed to respond adequately, you may escalate your complaint by emailing hello@sva.org.nz. You may also refer your complaint to the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner (www.privacy.org.nz) or the Australian Information Commissioner (www.oaic.gov.au), as applicable.