Privacy Policy

GUSDA (the Guyana UK Social Development Association) is a registered charity in England and Wales (Registered Charity No. 1207355), based in London. We are the data controller for the personal information you provide to us through this website.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, you can contact us at gusdauk@gmail.com.

We only collect the personal data we need to deliver our services and run our community programmes. This may include:

• Contact details — name, email address, phone number, and postal address.
• Account details — email and password (stored securely by our platform provider), plus profile information you choose to share such as date of birth, city, country, heritage connection and interests.
• Membership and event data — your membership tier, event bookings, ticket purchases and order history.
• Volunteer and business submissions — information you provide in our volunteer application or business directory submission forms.
• Newsletter subscriptions — your email address if you sign up for our newsletter.
• Technical data — IP address, browser type and usage data collected automatically when you visit our site.

Under the UK GDPR, we rely on the following lawful bases to process your personal data:

• Consent — when you sign up for our newsletter, submit a form, or agree to receive communications from us.
• Contract — when you become a member, purchase a ticket, or complete a transaction with us.
• Legal obligation — where we are required to keep records for accounting, tax or safeguarding purposes.
• Legitimate interests — to run our community programmes, communicate with members, and improve our services.

We use your personal data to:

• Process membership applications, event bookings, ticket purchases and donations.
• Send you order confirmations, event reminders and membership renewal notices.
• Share community news, event invitations and opportunities (only where you have consented).
• Administer the volunteer programme and review business directory submissions.
• Maintain accurate records for our charity's governance and reporting obligations.
• Respond to your enquiries and provide the support you request.

We only keep your personal data for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected. Membership and financial records are kept for a minimum of six years to meet our legal and accounting obligations. Other data, such as newsletter subscriptions, is kept until you ask us to remove it.

We do not sell your personal data. We may share it with trusted service providers who help us run our platform — for example our website hosting provider, email delivery service, and payment processor — but only where they have agreed to keep your data secure and use it solely on our behalf.

We may also disclose your data where required by law, or to protect the rights, safety or property of our community.

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you (Subject Access Request).
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Ask us to erase your data (the 'right to be forgotten').
• Object to or restrict the processing of your data.
• Receive a copy of your data in a portable format.
• Withdraw your consent at any time (without affecting processing already carried out).

Our website uses cookies to function properly. For details of the cookies we use and how to control them, please see our Cookie Policy.

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including encryption, secure access controls and regular reviews of our systems. However, no method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will post any changes on this page and update the 'last updated' date at the top.