Version 1.3 Last updated: 4 June 2024
International Volunteer HQ (“IVHQ”) is a division of HQ Travel LP, a limited partnership registered in New Zealand and trading as HQ Travel Group, International Volunteer HQ, and Intern Abroad HQ.
This Privacy Policy defines our approach to privacy and data protection. It explains the types of information we collect about you and what we do with that information. It also summarizes the steps we take to safeguard your personal information, and outlines what you can do to change your preferences.
We understand our responsibilities to treat personal information with respect, and acknowledge it is important to make you aware of how we collect, store, and disclose information you have shared with us. Our aim is to assist you to make an informed decision about sharing personal information with IVHQ.
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time so we recommend that you review this so that you are aware of your rights and any changes. If you are engaging with IVHQ on behalf of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that those you represent are aware of the content of this Privacy Policy and consent to your acting on their behalf.
When this policy refers to “International Volunteer HQ”, “IVHQ”, “us”, “we” or “our” it refers to HQ Travel LP, which is responsible as the Data Controller for the security and management of your personal information.
References to “Independent Local Teams” relate to the independent organizations responsible for hosting volunteers recruited and sourced by IVHQ. While we promote best practice data protection measures, we make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of Independent Local Teams, or any other third-party organization.
Information we collect
IVHQ collects personal information about you through a number of sources, depending on the circumstances of your engagement with us. Personal information collected and held by IVHQ may include:
- Your name, email address, contact details, gender, date of birth, dietary requirements, relevant medical background, nationality, school, emergency contacts details, travel insurance details, passport, and criminal background; and
- Details of volunteer programs you have either participated in or enquired about, including your travel details, program feedback and testimonials.
Personal data is either supplied by you directly to IVHQ, or provided to us by someone representing you. Information not collected on our application form is additionally sourced via email and other direct volunteer communications, including social media. We may also collect personal information if you choose to enter a scholarship or other promotion, subscribe to our newsletter, or request a brochure or other document.
Additional non-personal information is collected from visitors to our website and some of this information is collected using cookies (please see the ‘How we use cookies’ section below for further details). This information is collected for the purpose of improving user experience and the relevance of information presented, and may include details of webpages visited, your IP address, and the time and date and origin of your visit. This information cannot be attributed to you individually.
Online payments are processed through a secure third-party site, and IVHQ does not receive or have access to personal information such as bank or credit card details.
What we do with your information
We collect, hold, use and selectively disclose personal information about you in order to administer the function of selecting you as an eligible volunteer and placing you on one of our programs with an Independent Local Team, providing the most suitable customer service, or promoting volunteer safety. In the performance of our normal business activities we may use your information in the following ways:
- To review your suitability for a selected volunteer program via an automated or manual method.
- To enable an Independent Local Team to make arrangements necessary for your volunteer program.
- To contact you through a range of mediums to discuss any engagement you may have had with us, including your confirmed volunteer program, any feedback you may have provided, or any other service you have requested us to perform.
- To allow a listed emergency contact or insurance provider to be updated about any details regarding your program, including sensitive personal information in circumstances involving emergencies or concerns about volunteer safety where it is appropriate for them or IVHQ to act on your behalf.
- To meet the requirements of an institutional relationship or insurance policy.
- To make improvements to our programs, our website, applications and marketing, and to provide insights that help us to meet your needs better.
- To promote our volunteer programs. Feedback, reviews, testimonials, and photographic images and videos you provide to us, along with your name and details of your program, may be used for marketing and promotion purposes.
- To produce research and analysis for the purposes of measuring and communicating the impact of volunteer programs on individuals. The outputs of these activities will be presented at an aggregate level only and will not be attributable to any particular individual.
- Data relating to criminal offenses is not shared with any national law enforcement bodies.
In summary, we process your personal information for certain legitimate business purposes, which include:
- Presenting to you information that we believe will be of interest and relevance, through a range of marketing and communication channels.
- Identifying and recommending volunteer programs or associated services that we think may be of interest to you.
- Enhancing, modifying personalizing or otherwise improving your experience of our website, marketing or communications.
- To better understand the effectiveness of our website, marketing and communications with you. We may choose to market and promote this information to you via a wide range of mediums based on personal information held.
Whenever we process your data for this purpose we will keep your personal information rights in high regard and take steps to safeguard personal information. You can opt-out of receiving marketing information, or allowing us to process your information for these purposes at any time by using ‘unsubscribe’ links, or contacting us directly.
We process this personal information on a number of legal grounds, including with your consent, for the purposes of providing services to you under an existing or potential contract, to comply with legal obligations imposed on us, to protect your vital interests (for example, in the case of medical emergencies) and / or for our legitimate interests where these are not overridden by your rights.
Who we share your information with
We will only use your personal information within IVHQ for the purposes for which it was obtained. While we may share anonymized data with approved third-parties including Google, to perform services including marketing on our behalf, we do not provide your personal information to other third-parties without a lawful ground for that disclosure. We will not, under any circumstances, share or sell your personal information with any third party for their own marketing purposes, and you will not receive marketing from any other companies, charities or other organizations as a result of giving your details to us. Where your personal information is transferred to a third party in a non-approved country we ensure that suitable safeguards are put in place to ensure your personal information and rights are protected.
We may share your personal information with:
Internal stakeholders: In order to undertake the processing as set out above, our normal business and to provide you with a high quality of service and support, we may disclose your personal information to our employees, directors, contractors or approved third-party service providers located either in New Zealand or overseas.
Independent Local Teams: These organizations are independent from IVHQ and access the personal information of volunteers via our secure database for the purpose of arranging and providing in-country services. We have safeguards in place to ensure that these Independent Local Teams protect your personal information and only use this as authorized by IVHQ.
Your emergency contact or insurer: In some circumstances, such as in emergencies or when volunteer safety is a concern, it is appropriate for IVHQ to share your personal information with your listed emergency contact or your insurance provider.
Our flights or insurance partners: Where a volunteer notifies IVHQ that they wish to receive quotations for flights, insurance, or other travel services, we may share personal information such as your name, email address, travel dates, destination and home city with our partners. This information is provided solely for the purpose of providing a quotation that is relevant to your proposed travel.
Our add-on partners: Some services we offer as part of your trip, such as training courses or language lessons, are provided by other partners. We may share your personal information, such as your name, email address, travel dates, destination, date of birth and home address with these partners to enable them to enrol you into the services you have purchased.
Your university, school or corporate sponsor: Where a volunteer applies using a school or university email address, or indicates that they are a student of an educational institution or employee of a corporate sponsor, we may share your name, contact details and the program details with this institution.
Our payments platform, Stripe: We may be required to submit your personal data, including background checks and passport information, to Stripe should you submit a credit card chargeback request.
We do not allow these external organizations to use your data for their own purposes or disclose it to other third parties without our consent and we will take all reasonable care to ensure that they keep your personal information secure.
We will also comply with legal requests where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies for tax purposes or law enforcement agencies for the prevention and detection of crime).
Your rights
We respect your right to know details about the information we hold about you, and to correct any inaccuracies in our records. You can view and amend much of the personal information we hold about you by accessing your MyIVHQ account, however if you require further details you can contact us directly and complete a Data Subject Access Request form. All requests for personal information will be acknowledged and provided within 30 business days.
Should you wish to opt-out of receiving communications from IVHQ at any stage you can notify us by using ‘unsubscribe’ links or other opt-out tools provided in email communications or in forms used to apply for volunteer programs or join an IVHQ promotion or scholarship. Similarly, you can request that we permanently remove all personal information that we currently hold about you by contacting us. Once we are suitably notified, we will action your request within a reasonable timeframe.
You also have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information at any time, the right to request the personal information we hold about you is rectified, that any of our processing is restricted and the right to data portability. You can also choose not to provide us with some of the personal information we request, however this may result in us being unable to provide you with all of our services. Please contact us for further details about any of these rights.
How long we’ll keep your information
We are only permitted to store your personal information for as long as necessary having regard to the purposes for which it was collected or a related or ancillary purpose.
Generally, we keep your information in line with our data retention policy.
Therefore, we may delete your personal information after a reasonable period of time and, if you have not used our services for some time, you may have to re-enter or re-supply your personal information to us. At times, we may need to retain your information for a longer period where we need the information to comply with regulatory or legal requirements or where we may need it for our legitimate purposes. If we don’t need to retain information for this period of time, we may destroy, delete or anonymise it more promptly.
Cookies and Website Terms of Use
Although we try our best, IVHQ does not guarantee that website visitors will have uninterrupted or error-free access to, and use of our website. We also can’t guarantee that any files that are able to be downloaded are error-free and free from viruses or other defects. All website users need to rely on their own judgement in relation to the accuracy, completeness and suitability of all content on the IVHQ website.
How we use cookies
We use cookies on our website to improve user experience. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to an individual’s browser and while you visit a website, a cookie may be used to track the browser’s activities while also facilitating your ongoing access to, and usage of the website.
We use both first-party cookies and third-party cookies on our website. By using our website, you agree to us using both types of cookies in the ways described below.
First-party cookies allow us to track usage patterns and to compile data and analytics that help us to improve the content, structure and user experience of our website, but we can’t use them to identify you personally. We use cookies to store information about your behavior on our website so we can understand what you are most interested in and what information is of most use to you. This helps us to identify ways that we can make the content of our website more relevant to you and enables us to present you with offers and specific program or service information that our data shows might be of use or interest to you, depending on your current level of engagement with us. These cookies also help to make our marketing and direct communications with you more relevant, and facilitate our ability to advertise on other websites.
Third-party cookies, including those provided by Google and Google Analytics are used on certain pages on our website. The information collected by these cookies is used for the purpose of compiling analytical reports that enable IVHQ to measure and record the number of visits to various sections of our website, the average time spent on the site and the pages viewed. They do not allow any third party to collect any personal information from any users of our website, but they do enable Google and other advertising partners to show our advertisements to internet users based on their previous use of our website.
Neither IVHQ, or any third-party, store any personal information in cookie data. Users who wish to opt-out of third-party cookies can download and install an add-on for their web browser. Learn more about the Google Analytics opt-out and how to properly install the browser add-on here.
Contacting us
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or how we use or safeguard your personal information, please get in touch using the following details:
Email us: info@volunteerhq.org
Call us:
- International - +64-6-758-7949
- USA/Canada Toll Free - 1-877-342-6588
- UK Toll Free - 0-800-031-8376
- Australia Toll Free - 1-800-557-380
By post to Privacy Officer, International Volunteer HQ, PO Box 8273, New Plymouth 4340, New Zealand.
We aim to ensure your query is responded to and resolved in a timely manner.
If you would like to make a complaint or learn more about your rights in relation to your personal information, please contact the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner (www.privacy.org.nz).
Last updated: 4 June 2024
