Privacy

This website (the “Website”) is operated by the Communal Lunch Project (“Project”, “we”, “us” and/or “our”). It is the online component of a 3-year NSERC-funded College and Community Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF) research project. The project end date is March 31, 2023. This privacy policy sets forth our policy with respect to information that is collected from you.

This website has a firm commitment to internet privacy. You can visit and engage in most parts of this website without telling us who you are and without revealing any personally identifiable information. Specifically, participants who visit the website to only use the virtual resource sharing hub and to access videos on meal planning and preparation will not be required to share identifiable information.

Personal Information

The only time we collect personal information is when you voluntarily provide such information, such as when you contact us with inquiries, register through Eventbrite to join either a virtual or in-person lunch, or to post photos of student-made meals in our photo gallery through Instagram. Wherever we collect Personal Information we make an effort to provide a link to this Privacy Policy. By voluntarily providing us with Personal Information, you are consenting to our use of it in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How We Use The Information

Non-Personal Information

We use non-personal information from the anonymous online survey to generate statistics and measure website activity to improve our impact in this work and make our virtual and in-person project a useful tool for our participants.

Personal Information

Participation in this research project is voluntary and anonymous. Participation is limited to post-secondary students. Student participants have the option to engage in any part of this study and withdraw at any time. The in-person component requires participants to attend at least one in-person lunch, after which students can determine if there are direct and/or indirect benefits and provide feedback through an anonymous online survey. The online component is equally fluid: students can engage in any part of the virtual project and provide feedback through an anonymous online survey. Participants who join virtual or in-person lunches will sign up using Eventbrite. Their email addresses will be required to connect with the Project Assistant who is hosting the lunch through the Zoom platform — each lunch meeting will be password protected. When the event ends, the information about the event, including personal identifiers, such as email addresses, is deleted. Participants may choose to turn off the video setting for any virtual (Zoom) lunches that they attend, but participants should be aware that the virtual lunches are an attempt to create temporary online lunch communities, which are more easily facilitated when all participants have the video turned on. Participants are asked to refrain from taking screen shots of the other participants or the student-made meals during the virtual lunches without the expressed consent of each participant. This will be in the form of a consent sentence (“I consent to a screen shot of this virtual lunch”) in the chat box. We will not share your email address with other participants or organizations. We will not use your email address to solicit continued participation. We will post photos of student-made meals only on Instagram and the website photo gallery.

Storage

Only non-personal information will be collected through the anonymous survey, and this will be stored on a research-specific laptop which will have encryption software.

Security

We make great efforts to protect the Personal Information provided via the website. However, no Internet or e-mail transmission is ever fully secure or error-free. In particular, email sent to or from the web site may not be secure. Therefore, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via email.

Social Media

Through the website, you can choose to access certain social media websites and services that are owned and controlled by third parties (eg. Instagram). When you elect to access and use the Social Media Services, you will be sharing your information (which will include personal information if you elect to share such information) with those Social Media Services. The information that you share with the Social Media Services will be governed by the privacy policies and terms of service of such Social Media Services and not by the policies and procedures we describe here. In particular, student participants are invited to contribute photos of meals that they create by posting them on Instagram. You can learn more about Instagram’s privacy policy here. Participants who wish to remain anonymous may send photos of their meals to communallunch@gmail.com and their photos will be posted anonymously. This privacy policy has been updated as of September 1, 2020.