How the Faiths for Land Masterclass collects, uses and protects your personal information, including the optional information you may give us about your faith tradition. This is the full notice. A short summary appears when you create your account.
Who we are
Faiths for Land, covering both the community you can join and the masterclass, is hosted by FutureFaith Inc, which is the data controller for the information described here. We run it with the G20 Global Land Initiative and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and we deliver the masterclass with WWF’s Beliefs & Values Programme as well. If you join the community or take the masterclass, your information is shared with the G20 Global Land Initiative and the UNCCD. What is shared, and why, is set out under “Sharing with our partners” below.
FutureFaith Inc is a company incorporated in New York, in the United States. Write to us at info@faithsforland.org with any question about your information, or to exercise any of the rights below. We will also give you our registered postal address on request.
Because we offer this course to people in the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area, UK and EU data protection law applies to what we do with your information even though we are based outside those regions, and this notice is written to meet it.
What we collect
When you create an account we ask for your name, email address, country, and the organization or community you are part of, along with your role. We need these to give you access, to award your certificate in your correct name, and to report how far the masterclass has reached.
You may also choose to tell us your faith tradition and your preferred language. Both are optional. Faith tradition includes a “Prefer not to say” option, and you can leave it blank.
As you take the course we record your progress, your quiz results, anything you post in the discussion forums, any worksheet you upload, and the certificate you earn. Our servers also keep ordinary technical logs, including the times you sign in.
Why we are allowed to use it
For most of your information our lawful basis is the contract between us: you asked for a place on the masterclass, and we cannot give you access, track your progress or issue a certificate without it.
For our own reporting on how far the masterclass has reached, and for keeping the site secure and working, our basis is our legitimate interests. We have weighed those interests against your privacy and kept the data to what the purpose needs. You can object to this, and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds to continue.
For your faith tradition, and only that, our basis is your explicit consent. This is explained below.
Information about your religious belief
Under UK and EU data protection law, information about religious belief is a special category of personal data and gets extra protection. We ask for it only because the purpose of this masterclass is to support faith communities in restoring land, and our partners need to understand which communities that work reaches.
Answering that question is how you give your explicit consent. That consent covers our own use of it and the sharing with our partners described below, in the form set out there. It is entirely separate from the rest of the form. You do not have to answer it. Leaving it blank, or choosing “Prefer not to say”, has no effect at all on your account, your access to the course, your certificate, or anything else, and we will never ask you why.
You may withdraw your consent at any time, and it is as easy to withdraw as it was to give: clear the field in your profile, or write to us and we will clear it for you. Withdrawing does not affect anything we did lawfully before you withdrew, and it has no effect on your place on the course.
How we use it
We use your information to run the masterclass, to email you about your progress and about live sessions, and to issue and verify your certificate.
Your faith tradition is never shown to other learners and is never published against your name. If you join the community it is included in the working copy of sign-ups our team keeps in Google Sheets, described under “Who else can see it” below.
We do not use your information to make any automated decision about you, and we do not profile you.
Sharing with our partners
This applies whether you join the community or take the masterclass. Faiths for Land is run with the G20 Global Land Initiative and the UNCCD, the masterclass is delivered with WWF’s Beliefs & Values Programme as well, and your certificate is issued in partnership with them.
Your information is shared with the G20 Global Land Initiative and the UNCCD. That means your name, email address, country, organization and role, and, if you are a learner, whether you completed the course. We share the same details with WWF’s Beliefs & Values Programme for the masterclass.
They use it to verify certificates, to invite you to follow-up programmes, and to connect you with restoration work in your region. Each partner decides for itself how it handles what it receives, and its own privacy notice then applies. We share under a written agreement, and we do not allow them to sell your information or use it for advertising.
Your faith tradition is different. We share that with a partner only if you gave the explicit consent described above, and only in the form you agreed to. If you withdraw that consent we stop sharing it, though we cannot undo a disclosure already made.
We also report to the G20 Global Land Initiative and the UNCCD on how the masterclass is doing. Those reports are aggregate only, for example “learners from 40 countries across 9 faith traditions”, and never name you.
Who else can see it
Other learners can see your name and anything you choose to post in a discussion forum. They cannot see your email address, your country, your faith tradition, your language, or your results.
We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf, under contract: Hetzner (hosting, in Germany), Cloudflare (content delivery, video and backups), Resend (email delivery), and Google (a working copy of community sign-ups, held in Google Sheets and readable only by named members of our team). We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising.
Where your information is held
The masterclass itself is hosted in Germany, so your course data rests in the EEA. Cloudflare, Resend and Google are United States companies and may process your information outside the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area. Where that happens we rely on the standard contractual clauses approved for such transfers, together with the UK addendum, so that your information keeps the same protection it has at home. You can ask us for a copy of those safeguards.
Cookies
We use only the cookies the site needs to work: one that keeps you signed in, and one that remembers you have accepted this notice. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.
Age
The masterclass is written for adults. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 16. If you believe a child has given us their information, write to us and we will delete it.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and your record of completion while the masterclass runs and for three years afterwards, so that we can verify certificates. Backups are taken daily, kept for seven days, and then overwritten. If you ask us to delete your account we will do so, though we may keep a minimal record that a certificate was issued so that it can still be verified.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your information, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict how we use it, ask us to send it to another organisation, object to how we use it, or withdraw a consent you gave. You can do much of this yourself from your profile.
Write to us at info@faithsforland.org and we will answer within one month. There is no charge. If you are unhappy with our response you can complain to your national data protection authority. In the United Kingdom that is the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes
If we change how we use your information in a significant way, we will publish a new version of this notice and ask you to read it the next time you sign in.