What we collect and what we do with it

Custodians of the Blue, led by Tshepiso Kola, decides what personal information is collected here and why. Under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) that makes the programme the responsible party.

Questions, corrections and deletion requests go to kolatshepisho@gmail.com.

From learners, when you register and enter:

• your first name, surname, grade and school
• your cell number, which is how you log in
• your email address, only if you choose to give one
• your password, stored scrambled so nobody, including us, can read it
• your artwork, its title and your artist statement
• photographs of your artwork and of you making it
• your answers to the feedback questions, including how much waste you collected
• the date and time you last logged in

From judges: name, email address, title, organisation and a short biography.

From members of the public who vote: nothing that identifies you. A random identifier is stored in your browser and your network address is stored only as an irreversible scrambled value, used to stop the same person voting repeatedly.

• to run the competition and let you log in
• to let judges score artworks and give you feedback
• to contact you about deadlines, results and prizes
• to report to the funders who pay for the programme
• to publish the digital storybook and show artwork publicly
• to measure whether the programme actually worked

Reporting to funders uses combined figures and quotations. Your cell number is never part of a funder report.

POPIA treats information about a child with extra care. The programme does not rely on a learner's own agreement alone. A parent or guardian must sign the consent form before a learner takes part, and that signed form is the legal basis for handling a learner's information here.

A parent or guardian may withdraw that consent at any time by writing to the address above. Withdrawing consent may mean a learner can no longer take part in the competition.

Public: artwork photographs, artwork titles, artist statements, the learner's name and the school name, but only for entries approved for the People's Choice gallery or published as winners.

Never public: your cell number, your email address, your password, your feedback answers, and the photographs of you making the artwork. Those process photographs are kept in private storage and are shown only to the project lead and the judges, through links that expire after an hour.

Judges see your artwork, your statement and your feedback answers. The project lead can switch off learner names for the panel so judging is blind.

• Supabase stores the database and the photographs on our behalf.
• Netlify runs the website.
• Our email provider delivers invitations and notifications.
• Funders receive reports containing combined figures, artwork images and quotations, not contact details.
• Your school, through the teacher liaison, for anything to do with your participation.

Your information is never sold, and it is never given to advertisers. Some of these providers store data outside South Africa, which POPIA permits where the receiving country has comparable protection or the provider is contractually bound to it.

• passwords are hashed, so they cannot be read or recovered, only reset
• the whole site is served over an encrypted connection
• the database refuses every request that does not come from the portal itself
• photographs of learners at work sit in private storage, not on the open web
• significant actions are written to an activity log
• repeated wrong passwords temporarily lock out further attempts

Entries, feedback and artwork images are kept for the programme year and afterwards for reporting, the digital storybook and archives. Accounts no longer needed can be deleted on request. Some records must be kept to meet obligations to funders.

You, or your parent or guardian, may:

• ask what information is held about you
• ask for anything wrong to be corrected
• ask for your information to be deleted
• withdraw consent
• ask for a specific photograph to be taken down
• complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa if you are not satisfied with how the programme responds

Write to kolatshepisho@gmail.com. You will get an answer within 30 days.

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