Privacy Policy

What we collect

When you send a message through the contact form on this site, we receive the name, email address, subject, message, and — if you choose to give it — the telephone number you enter.

This site sets one item in your browser to remember whether you are reading in English or Amharic. It holds only that choice, it is not a tracking cookie, and it is never sent to anyone.

If you accept analytics cookies, we also receive anonymous statistics about how the site is used. That is described in full in the next section, and nothing of the kind is collected unless you accept.

Analytics and cookies

We use Google Analytics to understand how many people visit this site and which pages they find useful — for example, whether visitors are looking for service times or for the calendar. It helps the parish decide what to put on the site.

Nothing is collected until you press Accept on the notice at the bottom of the page. If you press Decline, or simply ignore it, the analytics script is never loaded and no request is made to Google at all.

If you do accept, Google Analytics records the pages you visit, roughly where in the world you are, and what kind of device and browser you use. Your IP address is shortened before it is stored. We do not use any of it for advertising, we do not build a profile of you, and we cannot identify you from it.

We also record when someone successfully sends a message through the contact form, so the church knows how many enquiries reach it. What you wrote in the message is never sent to Google.

You can change your mind at any time using the buttons at the end of this page.

Why we hold it

Only so that the church can read your message and reply to you. We do not use it for anything else.

We do not sell your information, share it with advertisers, or send you marketing. There is no mailing list on this site.

Where it is kept, and who can see it

Messages are stored in a secured database and can be read only by the church administrators who hold a sign-in to this site. Access requires a password, and administrative activity is logged.

Our database and hosting providers process the data on our behalf and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.

How long we keep it

Messages are kept while they are still needed for the matter you wrote about, and for the church’s own record of correspondence. You may ask us to delete yours at any time.

Your rights

Under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it if it is wrong, and ask us to delete it.

Write to us using the address below and we will act on your request.

Children

This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If a child has sent us a message, a parent or guardian may ask us to remove it.

Changes to this policy

If the way this site handles information changes, this page will be updated to say so.