Privacy & Cookie Policy

Zenways (“Zenways”, “we” “us”, or “our”) is an organisation established to promote and encourage activities and practices that enhance human wellbeing, balance and awakening (satori or kensho – the enlightenment of Zen) in the modern world.

This is the Zenways privacy notice. It explains how we collect and use personal data (any data which relates to or identifies an individual) about the people we interact with. It also supplements more specific information you may have been given (a privacy notice or statement) when engaging with a service, facility, event, or initiative run by Zenways. For example, you may have followed a link here because you signed up to attend an event we are running.

The information below is the same for all the Zenway’s activities where personal information is collected, so we thought it would be helpful to have it in one place that you can refer to and revisit whenever you need.

Zenways takes the care of your data seriously and operates in compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and subsequent enactments – including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into force on 25 May 2018. If you have any questions about the Zenways website or our use of personal data please contact us at: admin@zenways.org.

DATA WE COLLECT

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, which retreats you have attended, donations made, if you have volunteered with us, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when.

If you make a donation online or book a retreat with us, your banking information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialize in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

Users are responsible for any third-party Personal Data obtained, published, or shared through this website and confirm that they have the third party’s consent to provide the data to Zenways.

WHY DO WE PROCESS YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We will generally use your personal data to provide you with the services, products, or information you have requested from us. We may need to share your information with our service providers for these purposes, but we will ensure that appropriate contracts with these parties are in place and they only process your information in accordance with our instructions and data protection legislation. If we need to transfer any information to a country not recognised as providing equivalent protection, we rely on your consent or use additional safeguards approved by UK or EU regulators.

Specifically, we process your personal information for the following reasons:

• To operate our website and provide our services to you;
• To process your membership request, administer and provide you with access to your membership account;
• To improve your user experience by allowing you, to the extent of your choosing, to customise and personalise your account, to contribute to forum posts and for us prevent misuse of the discussion forums;
• To communicate with you and provide the products or perform the services requested by you (for example, to send you newsletters, to administrate purchases made through our online shop or bookings for events);
• For system maintenance and information security purposes to protect the website and its data by allowing investigation into fraud, hacking or other malicious site visits;
• For fundraising and/or marketing purposes. For example, we may use your information to send you information about Zenways, its products and its activities. Within any marketing communications, you will be provided with a simple and transparent way to unsubscribe. Any changes you request to how your personal information is processed for the purposes of marketing and/or the provision of service updates will be acted on promptly.
• To create aggregated statistical data and other aggregated and/or inferred non-personal information, which we may used to provide and improve our services such as the design or running of this website;
• To comply with any applicable laws and regulations.

LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING

Zenways process personal data under the following lawful bases:

• You provide consent for us to process your personal information for one or more specific purposes, based on clear and specific information, with a genuine choice (without any pressure), and the ability to change your mind at any time.
• We need your personal information to provide a service as part of a contract. Note that in English law ‘contracts’ are not limited to those in writing, so this justification may also cover less formal agreements between you and Zenways.
• We need your personal information to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject.
• We need your personal information for a legitimate interest of Zenways or a third party, provided that interest is not overridden by your interests and rights (for example, where we may need to process your information to protect our information security and system maintenance).
• We need your personal information to protect somebody’s life (a vital interest).

WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS?

By law, you have certain rights over your personal information:

• To receive a copy of your information
• To ask us to correct any errors
• To delete it once we no longer need it
• To ask us to stop using your information in a certain way
• To ask for certain information in a portable, electronic format
• To object to certain uses of your information (for example, marketing and automatic profiling or decision making)

To make a request for any of the above, please contact: members@zenways.org

DO WE USE ‘COOKIES’?

Cookies are text files, which identify a user’s computer to our servers. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used.

Our website uses cookies for collecting user information which may include IP address, operating system and browser information. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for personalised advertising and marketing efforts. Please note that some of these cookies are placed by commissioned service providers Google (including YouTube) and Meta (Facebook). For more information about how Zenways and our partners use cookies please see our Cookies Use page.

Information on controlling or rejecting cookies is available from several websites, such as http://www.aboutcookies.org. Most browsers allow you to refuse cookies – see the help section of your browser’s toolbar for further information or contact us at admin@zenways.org.

WHO DO WE SHARE YOUR DATA WITH?

We disclose your data to third parties where they are acting as authorised agents for Zenways for the purposes listed above (for example to process donations and send you mailings); or where we are permitted or required to do so under UK law.

Specifically, when you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor (Donorbox), who specializes in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. Donorbox’s privacy notice can be found here https://donorbox.org/privacy

Zenways uses Brevo: https://www.brevo.com/legal/termsofuse/ to support the sending of electronic messages through the website.

HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION FOR?

We retain personal information only as long as required to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected or as long as we are legally obliged to do so.

Once the retention period expires, personal data shall be deleted.

HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US OR MAKE A COMPLAINT TO THE REGULATOR?

To contact us about our privacy notice or information we hold about you, please write to us:

by email – admin@zenways.org
or by post – Zenways, 7 Mitcham House, Crawford Estate, London SE5 9NN, UK

If you do not feel we have dealt with your request appropriately, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.