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        <title>Policies</title>
        <link>http://ecoforum.uk/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:18:16 +0000</pubDate>
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        <title>Volunteer Policies</title>
        <link>http://ecoforum.uk/discussion/32/volunteer-policies</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2022 08:18:17 +0000</pubDate>
        <category>Policies</category>
        <dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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        <description><![CDATA[<h2>Equal Opportunities Policy</h2><p><a href="https://unacov.uk/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">UNA Coventry Branch</a> is committed to equal opportunities for all and we do not discriminate in our procedures or practices. We actively encourage participation of women and ethnic minority volunteers, and have a strong track record in this regard.</p><p>Bullying and harassment towards our volunteers are not tolerated.</p><p>If there are grievances, volunteers can appeal to UNA-UK who can, if necessary, revoke the affiliation of a Branch.</p><h2>Expenses Policy</h2><p>Volunteers can reclaim all reasonable expenses incurred in their activities on behalf of UNA Coventry provided they keep their receipts and submit a written claim including copies of those receipts.</p><h2>Volunteer Policy</h2><p>Volunteers fulfil roles as required by UNA Coventry Branch either on a short-term or long-term basis. The current roles are shown on the UNACov.uk website. Volunteers will be offered full support and training by members of the Committee, and encouraged to widen their knowledge and understanding of the UN.</p><p>Volunteers are recruited via websites and by the two universities in the city, as well as by personal invitation. Induction is normally by a face-to-face meeting. Training can be given in an on-going or one-off manner.</p><p>All volunteer data is held in privacy and will not be shared without permission.</p>]]>
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        <title>Safeguarding Policy</title>
        <link>http://ecoforum.uk/discussion/26/safeguarding-policy</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2022 08:14:57 +0000</pubDate>
        <category>Policies</category>
        <dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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        <description><![CDATA[<p>This Children and Vulnerable Adults Safeguarding Policy sets out the United Nations Association Coventry Branch’s approach to preventing and reducing harm to children and vulnerable adults when they are in contact with Branch members and volunteers.</p><h4>This policy aims to</h4><ul><li>Promote and prioritise the safety and wellbeing of children and vulnerable adults;</li><li>Provide assurance to parents, carers and other parties that the Branch takes reasonable steps to manage risks and keep children and vulnerable adults safe;</li><li>Ensure that Branch Members and volunteers understand their roles and responsibilities in respect of safeguarding and are provided with the necessary information, training and support on safeguarding matters;</li><li>Ensure that appropriate action is taken in the event of any allegations or suspicions regarding harm to children or vulnerable adults arising from contact with Branch members, interns or volunteers.</li></ul><h4>Key facts</h4><p>Neither members of the Branch nor our volunteers are expected or permitted to work with children or vulnerable adults except in the presence of a teacher, parent, carer or other responsible person who can monitor our activity.</p><p>As a result we do not submit our members or volunteers to the UK government’s Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks.</p><h4>Methods</h4><p>This Policy seeks to manage effectively the risks associated with activities and events involving children and vulnerable adults by:</p><ul><li>Ensuring that members of the Branch and our volunteers are aware that <strong>they must never work with children or vulnerable adults except in the presence of a teacher, parent, carer or other responsible person who can monitor their activity</strong>.</li><li>Completing a risk assessment for each event which involves identifying risks and means of reducing or eliminating these;</li><li>Implementing the required actions identified by the risk assessment process and reviewing the effectiveness of these on a regular basis;</li><li>Requiring new Branch members and volunteers to familiarise themselves with the content of this policy.</li><li>Requiring new Branch members and volunteers to complete the form below to say they have read and understood this policy.</li><li>Requiring Branch members and volunteers to report any allegations or suspicions of inappropriate behaviour either to the Chair of the Branch or to the United Nations Association – UK who will consider the information available and decide on the appropriate course of action.</li></ul><p>For more information see the <a href="https://pennytest.uk/blog/safeguarding-policy/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">UNA Coventry website</a>.</p>]]>
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        <title>Health and Safety Policy</title>
        <link>http://ecoforum.uk/discussion/23/health-and-safety-policy</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2022 08:10:13 +0000</pubDate>
        <category>Policies</category>
        <dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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        <description><![CDATA[<h3>Responsibilities</h3><p>The Administrator has overall and final responsibility for health and safety</p><p>If events are organised, the organiser of each event has day-to-day responsibility for ensuring this policy is put into practice.</p><h3>Statement of general policy</h3><p>Each event organiser has responsibility to maintain safe and healthy event conditions. The event organiser will achieve this by performing a risk assessment before an event and monitor and reduce risks arising during an event.</p><p>The event organiser has responsibility for providing clear instructions and information, and adequate training, to ensure volunteers are competent to do their work. The event organiser will achieve this by briefing volunteers and all attendees of safety procedures and warn of any known risks.</p><p>The event organiser has responsibility to engage and consult with volunteers on health and safety issues. The event organiser  will achieve this by discussing any known risks before event with volunteers and agree on a plan of action.</p><p>The event organiser and volunteers have responsibility to implement emergency procedures – evacuation in case of fire or other significant incident. The event organiser will achieve this by briefing volunteers and all attendees of safety procedures in case of emergency and managing the evacuation procedure in case of an incident.</p><p>The event organiser has responsibility for preventing accidents and cases of event-related ill health by managing the health and safety risks in the activity place. The event organiser will achieve this by performing a risk assessment before event and monitoring and reducing risks arising during the event.</p><p>The event organiser has responsibility for ensuring a First Aid kit is available at the event.</p><h2>Risk Assessment Policy</h2><p>All activities will be assessed for their risk and the volunteer will be informed of any relevant risks. Volunteers will be requested to adhere to the plan for each event and not to go beyond it without approval from the event organiser.</p>]]>
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        <title>Data Protection and Privacy Policy</title>
        <link>http://ecoforum.uk/discussion/6/data-protection-and-privacy-policy</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2022 14:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
        <category>Policies</category>
        <dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
        <guid isPermaLink="false">6@/discussions</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[<h2>Who we are</h2><p>This website is created and managed by the <a href="https://unacov.uk/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">United Nations Association Coventry Branch</a> which is affiliated to the <a href="https://una.org.uk/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">United Nations Association UK</a> (UNA-UK).</p><p>We are not part of the United Nations. We organise events where members of the public can find out about the United Nations and discuss international issues with experts. We also run a number of other programmes to promote UN-related issues to specific audiences.</p><h3>Contact information</h3><p>Contact us by writing to webmanager@ecoforum.uk</p><p>Contact our data controller and data protection officer by writing to gdpr@unacov.uk.</p><h2>Privacy Policy</h2><p>We respect your privacy and will never communicate any personal information you give us, such as your email address, to any other organisation. We do not sell any information collected by cookies, nor do we disclose the information to third parties, except where required by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies).</p><h2>What personal data we collect and why we collect it</h2><h3>Newsletter</h3><p>If you subscribe to one of our newsletters we retain your name and email so we can send you the newsletter. You can unsubscribe to the newsletter at any time by clicking on the link at the bottom of the newsletter.</p><h3>Comments</h3><p>When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: <a href="https://automattic.com/privacy/." rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">https://automattic.com/privacy/.</a> After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.</p><h3>Media</h3><p>If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.</p><h3>Events</h3><p>We use Google services to generate maps and provide autocompletion when searching for events by location, which may collect data via your browser in accordance to Google’s privacy policy. We collect and store information you submit to us when making a booking, for the purpose of reserving your requested spaces at our event and maintaining a record of attendance. We collect and store information you submit to us about events (and corresponding locations) you would like to publish on our site. We may use cookies to temporarily store information about a booking in progress as well as any error/confirmation messages whilst submitting or managing your events and locations.</p><h3>What are Cookies?</h3><p>Cookies are very small text files that are stored on your computer when you visit some websites. We use cookies to help identify your computer so we can tailor your user experience, track shopping basket contents (for sites with a shopping facility) and remember where you are in the order process.</p><h3>How we use Cookies</h3><p>If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day. Our website allows you to share pages with social networks such as Facebook. You may already have cookies from these social networks, and the network providers may use these cookies to help show you a personalized experience of our website. See your social network providers for more information on how they use cookies.</p><h3>StatCounter</h3><p>StatCounter is a web analytics service. Our websites use StatCounter to help us improve our site by tracking visitor activity. This includes storing a StatCounter cookie in your browser. See below for how to refuse this cookie.</p><h3>How to opt out of cookies</h3><p>If you do not want to receive cookies, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set. If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies which are set on your device then you can do this through your browser settings. The Help function within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers.</p><h3>StatCounter Opt-out</h3><p>If you wish to refuse StatCounter cookies, please visit the following page: <a href="http://statcounter.com/about/set-refusal-cookie/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">http://statcounter.com/about/set-refusal-cookie/</a></p><h3>Embedded content from other websites</h3><p>Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.</p><h2>How long we retain your data</h2><p>If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.</p><h2>What rights you have over your data</h2><p>If you have an account on this site or have left comments or subscribed to our newsletter(s), you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.</p><h2>Where we send your data</h2><p>Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.</p><h2>Additional information</h2><h3>How we protect your data</h3><p>All the data you send us is stored on secure, password protected web servers and/or computers that are stored in locked rooms.</p><h3>What data breach procedures we have in place</h3><p>We have procedures in place to notify a personal data breach to the supervisory authority and to the data subject.</p><h3>What third parties we receive data from</h3><p>We receive details of members and supporters from UNA-UK. We do not receive data from any third parties.</p><h3>What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data</h3><p>We do not use any automated decision making or profiling services.</p><p> </p>]]>
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