20.9 million people are victims of forced labour globally

This privacy policy is intended to inform you of the policies and procedures of Hands Across the World (“HATW e.V.”, ”HATW Incorporated”, “we” or “us”) and its affiliates. We take the privacy and protection of your Personal Information as defined below very seriously. We may collect Personal Information from you in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy when you visit websites operated by Hands Across the World.  We are committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to our site.

This Privacy Policy is intended to inform the general public and users about the types of data we collect and how we collect it, as well as how we use, process, and disclose your information, including personal information, in conjunction with your access to and use of the Website.  Generally, if we process data, we will ensure that there is a statutory basis for such processing, or we will obtain consent.  Processing of Personal Information shall comply with all data protection regulations applicable to HATW. 

You can contact us at any time to: request access to information that we have about you; correct any information we have about you; and/or delete information that we have about you.  If you have additional questions about our data collection or storage, please contact us at info@hatw.online.

Table of contents

• Definitions

• Visitor consent

• General security

• Personal information we collect

• Data you submit about third parties

• Information we collect via technology

• Use of information we collect

• Your choices regarding personal information

• Disclosing information to third parties

• Links to outside websites

• Regarding minors

• Contact us

• Privacy policy updates

Definitions

“Account” means a “Hands Across the World” account.

“Anonymous Information” means information not associated with or linked to your Personal Information; Anonymous Information does not permit the identification of individuals.

“Controller” means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by European Union or Australian State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by European Union or Australian State law

“ED Request” means a request for an equivalency determination.

“Personal Information” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person; an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

“Process” or “Processing” means any operation or set of operations which is performed on Personal Information or on sets of Personal Information, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.

“Services” means the services we offer through the Websites.

If you see an undefined term in this Privacy Policy, it has the same definition as the terms used by the European legislature for the adoption of the GDPR.

General security

Hands Across the World takes commercially reasonable physical, electronic, and managerial precautions to prevent the loss and misuse of Personal Information under our control. Web-based data transmissions may in principle have security gaps, so absolute protection may not be guaranteed. For this reason, you are free to transfer Personal Information to us via alternative means, e.g. by telephone.

Personal Information we collect from our grantmaker members

There are two general categories of information we collect. In both instances, we only collect and use your information to provide the Services (e.g., for fulfilling an ED request, for getting our newsletter, for informing you about educational programs and our projects, updates in the field, and updates to the Services).

1. Information you give that is necessary for the Services 

We require and collect the following Personal Information that you voluntarily submit to us when you use the Websites and Services. This information is necessary for the performance of a contract in which the data subject is a party and to allow us to comply with our legal obligations under the contract and more generally. The following information is required because without it, we may not be able to provide you with all the requested services:

• Account Information. When you sign up for an Account, we require certain information such as your first name, last name, email address, the password you choose, as well as a security question and answer.

• Payment Information. We may require you to provide us with certain financial information (like your bank account or credit card information) in order to facilitate the processing of payments. 

• Communications with HATW regarding the Services. When you communicate with HATW to provide additional contacts, or other information needed to fulfill an ED request or payment processing, for example, we collect information about your communication (such as your email address) and any information you choose to provide in order to provide the Services.

If you wish to use the Websites and Services, we require the aforementioned information; if you do not want to provide this information, you should not use the Websites or Services.

     2. Information you choose to give (optional; provided with consent)

• When you enter any information, including Personal Information, into any posting or comments within the Services, we will collect such information;

• When you respond to one of our surveys, we will collect any information contained in such survey responses; and

• When you leave us feedback or request support, we will collect any information that is contained in your feedback or support request (including your email address).

Personal Information we collect from NGOs

     1. Information you give that is necessary for the Services (required; provided as necessity)

With respect to Personal Information provided by an NGO, we only share such data if the NGO specifically consents to sharing it.

If you wish to use the Websites, we require the aforementioned information; if you do not want to provide this information, you should not use the Websites.

     2. Information you to choose to give (optional; provided with consent)

• When you enter any information, including Personal Information, into any posting or comments within the Services, we will collect such information;

• When you respond to one of our surveys, we will collect any information contained in such survey responses; and

• When you leave us feedback or request support, we will collect any information that is contained in your feedback or support request (including your email address).

Hands Across the World collects certain information, registration, and operational documents from NGOs (“Governing Documents”). Such Governing Documents may contain Personal Information, such as names, addresses, signatures, photographs, and other identifying information connected to directors, trustees, officers, or translators, for example. While we require copies of Governing Documents, we do not require any of the Personal Information that may be embedded in them. HATW therefore requests that NGOs redact such Personal Information before submitting the Governing Documents (or any other supporting materials) to HATW. If HATW receives such Personal Information, it will delete or redact the data upon receipt.

Data you submit about third parties

If you choose to refer a NGO entity to us, you will provide information about such third party through the Services, such as the third party’s name and email address. If the third party registers with us, such third party will become a user of the Services and subject to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. If the third party does not register for the Services, we will delete any Personal Information provided within a reasonable period after obtaining the information.

Information we collect via technology

When you access any part of our Website, our web server software automatically logs information provided by your network connection and web browser software, including the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your network connection and the type of web browser and operating system that you are using. Our web server may also log the URL of the file that you are requesting, the current date and time, and the URL of the last web page requested by your web browser.

In order to make visiting our website attractive and to enable the use of certain functions, we use so-called cookies on various pages. These are small text files that are stored on your device. Some of the cookies we use are deleted after the end of the browser session, i.e. after you close your browser (so-called session cookies). Other cookies remain on your device and enable us or our partner to recognise your browser on your next visit (persistent cookies). You can set your browser in such a way that you are informed about the setting of cookies and decide individually about their acceptance or exclude the acceptance of cookies for certain cases or in general. Non-acceptance of cookies may limit the functionality of our website. Below we explain the purposes for which we use cookies on our website.The following cookies are used by Wix.com Ltd (web hoster):

Name of cookie

Purpose

Type of cookie

Duration

XSRF-TOKEN

is used for security reasons

essential

session

hs

is used for security reasons

essential

session

svSession

used in connection with user login

essential

2 years

SSR-caching

is used to indicate the system from which the website was rendered

essential

1 minute

_wixCIDX

is used for system monitoring/troubleshooting

essential

3 month

_wix_browser_sess

is used for system monitoring/troubleshooting

essential

session

consent-policy

is used for cookie banner parameters

essential

12 month

smSession

is used to identify logged-in website members

essential

session

TS*

used for security and anti-fraud purposes

essential

session

bSession

used to measure system effectiveness

essential

30 minutes 

fedops.logger.sessionID

used to measure system effectiveness

essential

12 month

wixLanguage

is used on multilingual websites to store the user's language 

functional

12 month

Cookie settings can also be managed and deleted in the browser of your PC or mobile device. The following links can help you to do this:

Cookie settings in Firefox: 

https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/verbesserter-schutz-aktivitatenverfolgung-desktop?redirectslug=Enabling+and+disabling+cookies&redirectlocale=en-US 

 

Cookie settings in Internet Explorer: 

https://support.microsoft.com/de-de/topic/l%C3%B6schen-und-verwalten-von-cookies-168dab11-0753-043d-7c16-ede5947fc64d 

Cookie settings in Google Chrome: 

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647 

 

Cookie settings in Safari (OS X): 

https://support.apple.com/de-de/guide/safari/sfri11471/mac 

 

Cookie settings in Safari (iOS): 

https://support.apple.com/de-de/HT201265 

 

Cookie settings in Android: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=de-de&oco=0 

 

Status: File setting

We may utilize Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies to gather information relating to the usage of our websites. The information generated by cookies (including IP addresses) is transmitted to and stored on Google servers. This information may then be analyzed and compiled into reports on website activity. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where said third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate any data gathered from our Websites with any other data held by Google.

You have the option of disabling or not accepting cookies by changing the preferences in your web browser and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. If you deactivate the setting of cookies in your browser, it is possible that not all functions of our website(s) may be entirely used.  For example, if you opt to disable cookies, you will still be able to access our Websites, but you may not be able to use certain features of the websites, including placing ED Requests.

Use of information we collect

In general, we use Personal Information you submit to us to provide  services to you, respond to requests you make, improve the services, and offer you additional information, opportunities, and functionality. We may also use your Personal Information to provide you with updates about the services. Finally, we may rely on Personal Information in order to comply with our legal obligations. None of the Personal Information we collect will be shared with third parties without your express authorization.

1. Providing and improving the services

• Enable you to access and use the Websites and the services.

• Operate, protect, improve, and optimize the services and experience, such as by performing analytics and conducting research.

• Provide customer service.

• Send you service or support messages, updates, security alerts, and account notifications.

• Send you promotional messages and other information that may be of interest to you based on your preferences (including information about HATW or related programs).

If you provide feedback to us, we may use and disclose such feedback for any purpose, provided we will not associate such feedback with your Personal Information. We will collect any information contained in such communication and will treat any Personal Information included in such communication in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We may create Anonymous Information records from Personal Information by excluding information that makes the Personal Information personally identifiable to you. We may use this Anonymous Information to learn more about how visitors use our Websites, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track visitor movement, and to gather general demographic information for reporting purposes.

We process this information given our legitimate interest in improving the Services and our users’ and members’ experience, and where it is necessary for the performance of the contract with you and/or a legal obligation. You can opt-out of receiving communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions included in our marketing communications or changing your notification settings within your Account (see also “Your rights” below).

1. Complying with our legal obligations

• Detect and prevent fraud, spam, abuse, security incidents, and other harmful activity.

• Conduct security investigations and risk assessments.

• Verify or authenticate information provided by you (such as to verify your authorization to act as an agent on behalf of a nonprofit organization).

• Conduct checks against databases and other information sources, to the extent permitted by applicable laws.

• Resolve any disputes with any of our users or customers and enforce our agreements with third parties.

• Enforce our Terms of Use and other policies.

We process this information given our legitimate interest and legal obligation to protect the Websites, to measure the adequate performance of our contract with you, and to comply with applicable laws. HATW may process your information if it is necessary for legitimate interests, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data.

Your choices regarding your Personal Information

HATW regularly sends newsletters and promotional communications to (a) let you know about new features or changes to our Services, (b) offer you opportunities to participate in special promotions, events, and surveys, and (c) notify you about services offered by outside partner organizations. These emails will originate from Hands Across the World or its affiliates. You may choose to opt-out from receiving such communications by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the communication or by editing your communication preferences in your Account.

You may also occasionally receive administrative site and service announcement updates via email (such as, but not limited to, notice that we have changed the Services or the Privacy Policy) when we believe necessary. You may not opt-out from these announcements (which are not promotional in nature), as they contain important information about changes to our Services. If you do not wish to receive these announcements, you have the option to cancel your organization’s HATW membership or remove yourself as a contact for your organization's HATW membership. You understand that any such termination of your Account information may involve deletion of your Personal Information from our live databases. We will not have any liability whatsoever to you for any termination of your Account or related deletion of your information.

Note that in some cases, you may request that we delete your Personal Information, but we may be required (by law or otherwise) to keep this information and not delete it (or to keep this information for a certain time, in which case we will comply with your request only after we have fulfilled such requirements). When we delete information that we have collected from or about you, it will be deleted from our active databases but may remain in our archives.

How to change your information

If you would like to change any of your Personal Information in your HATW Account, you can send a request to change, correct, or remove information to info@hatw.online.

If you believe that any of the information contained in an organization record on HATW is incorrect, you should contact HATW via email at info@hatw.online (see also “Your rights” below).

Disclosing information to third parties

              1. Service providers

Since HATW is part of a global network, it conducts activities globally. In doing so, HATW uses a variety of third parties to help us provide the Service. Service providers may be located inside or outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”). The EEA unites the EU Member States and the three EEA EFTA States (Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) into a market governed by the same basic rules (such as GDPR).  

For example, service providers may help us: (a) verify your identity or authenticate your identification documents, (b) check information against public databases, (c) conduct background or police checks, fraud prevention, and risk assessment, (d) perform product development, maintenance and debugging, (e) allow the provision of the Services through third party platforms and software tools (e.g., through the integration with our APIs), or (f) provide customer service, advertising, or payment services. These providers have limited access to your information to perform these tasks on our behalf, and are contractually bound to protect and to use it only for the purposes for which it was disclosed and consistent with this Privacy Policy.

If  HATW needs to share your information, including Personal Information, with a service provider, in order to ensure the adequate performance, we are permitted to do so.

              2. Business transfers

If  HATW undertakes or is involved in any merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, bankruptcy, or insolvency event, then we may sell, transfer or share some or all of our assets, including your information in connection with such transaction or in contemplation of such transaction (e.g., due diligence). In this event, HATW will notify you before your personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

3. Compliance with law, responding to legal requests, preventing harm and protection of our rights

Hands Across the World may disclose your information, including personal information, to courts, law enforcement or governmental authorities, or authorized third parties, if and to the extent we are required or permitted to do so by law or if such disclosure is reasonably necessary: (a) comply with our legal obligations, (b) to comply with legal process and to respond to claims asserted against HATW, (c) to respond to verified requests relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other of our users to legal liability, (d) to enforce and administer our Terms of Use or other agreements with our users and customers, or (e) to protect the rights, property or personal safety of HATW, its employees, its users, customers or members of the public.

            4. Aggregated data

We may also share aggregated information (information about our users that we combine together so that it no longer identifies or references an individual user) and other anonymized information for regulatory compliance, industry and market analysis, insights about the sector, demographic profiling, marketing and advertising, and other business purposes. We may share this aggregated data with the public.

Links to outside websites

This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected through the Websites. Our Websites may contain links to outside websites for your convenience, and such links do not signify our endorsement of such websites or their contents. HATW has no control over, does not review and is not responsible for the privacy practices of or content displayed on other websites. We encourage our visitors to be aware when they leave our Websites and to read the privacy policies of each and every third party website that collects information from you.

Your rights

You may exercise any of the rights described in this section by sending an email to info@hatw.online. Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity before taking further action on your request.

      1.  Managing your information.

You may access and update some of your information through your Account settings. You are responsible for keeping your personal information up-to-date.

      2. Rectification of inaccurate or incomplete information.

You have the right to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information concerning you.

      3. Data access and portability.

In some jurisdictions, applicable law may entitle you to request copies of your Personal Information held by us. You may also be entitled to request copies of Personal Information that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format and/or request us to transmit this information to another service provider (where technically feasible).

      4. Data retention and erasure

We generally retain your Personal Information for as long as is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and us and to comply with our legal obligations. If you no longer want us to use your Personal Information to provide the Services to you, you can request that we erase your personal information and close your Account. Please note that if you request the erasure of your personal information:

• We may retain some of your Personal Information as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud detection and prevention and enhancing safety. For example, if we suspend an Account for fraud or safety reasons, we may retain certain information from that Account to prevent that user or customer from opening a new Account in the future.

• We may retain and use your Personal Information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations. For example, HATW may keep some of your information for tax, legal reporting and auditing obligations.

• Information you have shared with us may continue to be publicly visible on the Websites, even after your Account is cancelled. However, attribution of such information to you will be removed. Additionally, some copies of your information (e.g., log records) may remain in our database, but are disassociated from personal identifiers.

• Because we maintain the Websites to protect from accidental or malicious loss and destruction, residual copies of your Personal Information may not be removed from our backup systems for a limited period of time.

      5. Withdrawing consent and restriction of processing

Where you have expressly provided your consent to the processing of your Personal Information by HATW you may withdraw your consent at any time by sending a communication to HATW specifying which consent you are withdrawing. Please note that the withdrawal of your consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing activities based on such consent before its withdrawal. Additionally, in some jurisdictions, applicable law may give you the right to limit the ways in which we use your Personal Information, in particular where (a) you contest the accuracy of your Personal Information; (b) the processing is unlawful and you oppose the erasure of your Personal Information; (c) we no longer need your Personal Information for the purposes of the processing, but you require the information for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims; or (d) you have objected to the processing (see below) and pending the verification whether the legitimate grounds of HATW override your own.

      6. Objection to processing

In some jurisdictions, applicable law may permit you to legally object to HATW’s processing. In these instances, you may require HATW not to process your Personal Information for specific purposes (including profiling) where such processing is based on a legitimate interest. If you object to such processing, HATW will no longer process your Personal Information for these purposes unless we can demonstrate a legal basis for doing so or such processing is required for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.

At any time, regardless of applicable law, you may object to us processing your Personal Information for direct marketing purposes. You may, at any time, ask HATW to cease processing your data for these direct marketing purposes by sending an email to info@hatw.online.

      7. Lodging Complaints.

With respect to GDPR, you have the right to submit complaints about the data processing activities carried out by HATW before Office of the Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data; for complaints unrelated to GDPR, nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit your right to file a complaint in the appropriate jurisdiction.

Operating globally

To facilitate our global operations HATW may transfer, store, and process your information within our family of public benefit organizations in countries both in/out of EU. Laws in these countries may differ from the laws applicable to your Country of Residence. For example, information collected within the EEA may be transferred, stored, and processed outside of the EEA for the purposes and bases described in this Privacy Policy. Where we transfer, store, and process your personal information outside of the EEA we have ensured that appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure an adequate level of data protection.

EU Model Clauses

If your information is shared with corporate affiliates or third party companies or service providers outside the EEA, we have, prior to sharing your information with such corporate affiliate or third party company or service provider, established the necessary means to ensure an adequate level of data protection. This agreement may incorporate the basis of the EU Model Clauses (a set of clauses issued by the European Commission).

Contact us

Hands Across the World e.V.
Wechmarer Straße 57, 99869 Schwabhausen

Deutschland
Email: info@hatw.online

 

Privacy Policy updates

This Privacy Policy is subject to periodic occasional revision. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you through this Website or, if you have provided your email address, by email. You agree that such amended Privacy Policy will be effective thirty (30) days after being posted or sent to you, and your continued access to the Websites or use of the Services after such time shall constitute your acceptance of the amended Privacy Policy.