Your privacy, our care.

At Association YWAM Château (hereinafter, "we", "us", "our", or "the Organisation"), we sincerely care about privacy, security, and transparency. These fundamental elements play an important part in our ministry's mission. This Privacy Policy explains how we safeguard your personal information when you visit our website (ywamchateau.com), submit a form, contact us by messaging, or subscribe to our newsletter. It also clarifies your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please be informed that this website is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from individuals under this age without verifiable parental or legal guardian consent.

We encourage you to read this Privacy Policy in full so you understand what information we collect, how it is processed, with whom we may share it, and what your rights are.

1Who Controls Your Data

Association YWAM Château is a Swiss-registered ministry association and the Data Controller for personal data collected through this website and our direct ministry communication channels. Our specific role depends on the activity:

Independent Controller (website + ministry). We act as an Independent Data Controller for personal data we process about you in connection with our website (forms, analytics, security), ministry communications (newsletter, prayer letters), enquiries via WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, or contact form, and our school application process before enrollment.

Joint Controller (academic records). When you enroll in one of our credit-bearing schools or programs (such as DTS, DBS, SPL, or others we may run over time) and arrive on-site to begin the course, we submit your academic record together with basic personal information (name, date of birth, nationality, primary language, email address, course enrollment, dates, completion status, grades, and certificates; we do not collect race or ethnicity) to the University of the Nations Records System, operated by Global Education Services Association (GESA). For this academic record processing, we act as a Joint Data Controller with GESA, under the terms of our Operating Location Services Agreement and Joint Controller Data Protection Terms with GESA. We jointly determine the purpose: maintaining the official Learner record and supporting degree-program decisions across the global U of N. Your academic record may include courses you take at multiple YWAM bases worldwide and is combined into a unified transcript in the U of N Records System.

Exercising rights for academic data. Because GESA and YWAM Château are joint controllers for academic records, you may exercise your data-protection rights (access, correction, erasure, portability, and so on) against either party. In practice, requests primarily about the unified transcript or courses spanning multiple YWAM bases are best directed to GESA, while requests limited to a course you took with us are best directed to us. We will not refuse a request solely because it was sent to the “wrong” party, and we cooperate with GESA to provide a single, coordinated response. GESA's privacy notice describes this further at uofn.edu.

Sharing with partner YWAM bases. Some of our schools, seminars, or programs physically operate at other YWAM bases that are separate legal entities (for example, YWAM Colorado Springs hosts the lecture phase of some of our schools). When you enroll and arrive at one of those bases, we share a limited set of identity data (name, date of birth, nationality) with the host base so they can assign housing, prepare meals, and meet local operational requirements. Those YWAM bases are separate, Independent Data Controllers for their own housing and base-operations processing, and you are subject to their respective privacy practices once your data is shared with them.

Other YWAM bases and the wider movement. The global YWAM movement is made up of autonomous bases that are independent legal entities. If you contact a YWAM base other than YWAM Château or apply to a course run by another Operating Location, that location is responsible for its own privacy practices.

Registered address:
Association YWAM Château
Rte de Saint-Amour 16
1073 Savigny
Switzerland

2How We Collect Information

We may collect your data through direct interaction, automated technology, or third parties.

Direct interactions

We may receive your information directly when you:

• fill out a form on our website (Contact, Apply, Newsletter, RSVP, or similar);
• send us a message via WhatsApp or KakaoTalk;
• call or text us;
• subscribe to any of our newsletters or prayer letters;
• apply to one of our schools, seminars, or programs (such as DTS, DBS, SPL, or others we may run over time);
• register or RSVP for one of our events (such as One Korea events);
• provide feedback or testimony.

Automated technologies

When you use our website, we and our infrastructure providers may collect technical data about your visit (such as your IP address, browser type, device, and which pages you viewed) using cookies and similar technologies.

Third parties

We may receive personal data via our service providers (subprocessors) listed in Section 7 below, for example, when you submit a form embedded on our site, your data is collected by our forms provider on our behalf.

3Information We May Collect

We may collect the following categories of information that make you identifiable:

• Identity Data, first name, surname, date of birth, nationality (we do not collect race or ethnicity), and any other personal details you provide.
• Contact Data, email address, phone number, geographic address (when relevant to the application or correspondence).
• Application Data, information you submit when applying to one of our schools, including testimony of faith, references, and program preferences.
• Communication Data, messages you send us, your communication preferences, and language preference (Korean or English).
• Technical Data, your IP address, operating system, browser type and version, device type, and other technical information about how you access our website.
• Usage Data, which pages you visit on our site, how long you stay, what links you click, and similar analytics about website usage.
• Marketing Data, your choices about whether to receive newsletters and other communications from us.

We may also process aggregated statistical or demographic data derived from personal data. Aggregated data is not personal data when it does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.

4How We Process Your Data

We will only process your data in accordance with applicable law. In most instances, we use your data:

• when you have given us your consent (which you may withdraw at any time);
• when processing is necessary for our legitimate interests (for example, responding to your enquiry or improving our website);
• when we need to fulfil a contractual obligation (for example, processing your application to a school);
• when we are required to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

5Lawful Basis for Processing

The table below describes the main ways we may use your personal data, together with the lawful basis for each. Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered and balanced those interests against your rights.

Definitions

• Consent means you have given clear, specific permission for us to process your data for the stated purpose.
• Legitimate Interest means we have a real, lawful reason to process the data (such as running our ministry, securing our website, or responding to a question), and we have weighed that interest against your rights.
• Contract means processing is necessary to perform an agreement with you, or to take steps at your request before entering into one (such as processing your school application).
• Legal Obligation means processing is necessary for compliance with applicable Swiss, EU, or other law.

6Communications and Marketing

We will only send you marketing or ministry communications (such as our newsletters) where you have opted in. You can opt out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any of our marketing emails that we send, or by contacting us via the channels in Section 11.

Where you opt out of marketing communications, we may still send you transactional or service messages, for example, replies to your enquiry, application status updates, or important policy changes.

7Service Providers, Recipients & International Transfers

We use a small number of trusted third-party service providers to operate our website, manage forms and CRM, send email, and analyse traffic. We also share certain data with partner organisations (the University of the Nations and host YWAM bases) once you enroll in a school and arrive on-site, as described in Section 1. Some of these providers and recipients are based outside Switzerland and the European Economic Area (EEA). In those cases, processing your data involves an international transfer.

When we transfer your personal data outside the EEA or Switzerland, we ensure a similar degree of protection by relying on at least one of the following safeguards:

• The country has been recognised by the European Commission or the Swiss Federal Council as providing adequate data protection.
• The provider is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF) and the Swiss–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, where applicable.
• We rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission.

You may contact us (Section 11) for further information on the specific safeguard used for any transfer.

8Your Security

We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to prevent your personal data from being lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal data to those volunteers, staff, contractors, and service providers who have a real need to access it, and they are bound by a duty of confidentiality.

In the event of a personal data breach affecting your information, we will notify you and the relevant supervisory authority where we are legally required to do so under applicable Swiss FDPA and EU GDPR rules.

9How Long We Keep Your Data

We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk from unauthorised use, the purposes of processing, whether those purposes can be achieved by other means, and applicable legal requirements.

In some cases we may anonymise your personal data, once anonymised, it can no longer be linked to you, and we may keep the anonymised data indefinitely for research, statistical, or historical ministry purposes.

Academic records. Once your academic record has been submitted to the University of the Nations Records System (after enrollment and arrival, per Section 1), it is retained by GESA for the period described in their privacy notice, typically for the lifetime of the academic transcript, since transcripts are intended to be permanent records of completed coursework. You can request access, correction, or other rights regarding your academic record directly from GESA at uofn.edu.

10Your Rights

Under applicable data-protection law (including the Swiss FDPA, EU GDPR, UK GDPR, Brazil's LGPD, US state privacy laws such as the California CCPA/CPRA, Virginia VCDPA, and Colorado CPA, or your local equivalent), you have rights including:

• Access, request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction, request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Erasure, request that we delete your personal data, subject to legal exceptions.
• Restriction, request that we limit how we use your data while a request is being resolved.
• Objection, object to processing based on legitimate interests, including direct marketing.
• Portability, request that we transfer your data to you or to another controller in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Withdrawal of consent, withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent (this does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal).

To exercise any of these rights, contact us via the channels in Section 11. We will not charge a fee for legitimate requests, but we may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse the request, if it is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. We try to respond within one month.

We may need to ask you for additional information to confirm your identity before acting on your request. This protects you against your data being disclosed to someone with no right to receive it.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection supervisory authority. In Switzerland, this is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (edoeb.admin.ch).

11How to Contact Us

We do not publish a public email address. The fastest way to reach us about privacy is through one of our messaging channels:

• Contact form: ywamchateau.com/contact
• WhatsApp, call, or SMS: +41 78 344 08 16
• KakaoTalk: via the contact page
• Postal: Association YWAM Château, Rte de Saint-Amour 16, 1073 Savigny, Switzerland

12Cookies and Similar Technologies

A "cookie" is a small text file a website stores on your browser. We use a minimal set of cookies and similar technologies, and we have deliberately chosen tools that avoid tracking cookies wherever possible.

What we set

• Strictly necessary cookies, set automatically by our hosting and security provider (Cloudflare) to detect and block bots, distribute traffic safely, and keep the site online. These are required for the site to function and do not require your consent.
• Cookieless analytics, we use privacy-respecting analytics that do not set tracking cookies and do not identify you personally. We see aggregate metrics like page views, referrers, and country, but not your individual browsing behaviour.
• Language preference, when you switch the language toggle on our site (한국어 / Both / EN), your browser stores that preference locally so the site remembers it on your next visit. This is a local-storage value, not a tracking cookie, and it never leaves your browser.

Embedded forms and content

Some pages embed third-party forms or content (for example, our contact form, application forms, event registrations, or video). When those embedded providers (such as GoHighLevel, Google Forms, Eventbrite, YouTube) load on a page, they may set their own cookies governed by their own privacy notices. You will typically see their cookie or consent prompts directly within the embed.

If we add tracking analytics in the future

If we ever introduce analytics or marketing tools that set tracking cookies (for example, Google Analytics or advertising pixels), we will update this section, list those tools in Section 7, and present a clear consent banner before any non-essential cookies are set.

Managing cookies

You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings at any time. Most browsers allow you to refuse all cookies, accept only first-party cookies, or be notified before a cookie is set. Disabling strictly necessary cookies may affect parts of the site (such as form submissions or anti-bot protection).

13Third-Party Links

Our website may include links to third-party websites (including social media, partner ministries, donor platforms, and external resources). Clicking those links allows the third party to collect or share data about you. We do not control these websites and are not responsible for their privacy notices. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of any website you visit.

14Changes to This Policy

We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, our service providers, or applicable law. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page shows when it was most recently changed. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

If we make material changes, we will take reasonable steps to notify you (for example, by email if you have subscribed to our newsletter, or via a notice on the website).