Terms of Use

Sustainable Schools Online Platform Terms Of Use

These Terms govern your use of the Online Platform and form a binding contractual agreement between you (the user) and us (Nature Connect), the owner and operator of the Online Platform.

These Terms are important and should please be read carefully. If you have any questions related to these Terms, please contact us on sustainableschools@natureconnect.earth before you accept these Terms of Use and use the Online Platform.

These Terms include our privacy statement, copyright statement and disclaimer. By using the Online Platform, you acknowledge and agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to the Terms, you are not authorised to use the Online Platform.

DEFINITIONS

• Confidential Information means all confidential, non-public or proprietary information about either you, us, or related to a School or its staff, students or students’ parents or guardians, regardless of how the information is stored, delivered or exchanged. Confidential Information excludes:
  • any information that is uploaded to the Online Platform by you and subsequently de-identified by us;
  • any School Community Content; or
  • information which is or becomes generally available to the public (other than as a result of a breach of these Terms)

• Content means any material (including comments, text, images, audio, video and audio-visual material, information and data) which is uploaded to the Online Platform.

• Education for Sustainability is an educational approach aiming to develop students, schools and communities with the values, skills, knowledge and the motivation to take action for sustainability now and in the future – in their personal lives, within their community, locally and also at a global scale.

• Implementing Partner means a person or entity engaged by Nature Connect, pursuant to an Implementing Partner Agreement to support a School’s participation in Sustainable Schools, and includes its contractors, agents and employees.

• Implementing Partner Agreement means an agreement between a Sustainable Schools Implementing Partner and Nature Connect to provide the Sustainable Schools Implementing Partner with the framework and tools to assist Schools to implement and participate in the Sustainable Schools Programme.

• Intellectual Property includes patent, know-how, copyright, design, semiconductor or circuit layout rights, trade mark (whether registered or unregistered) service mark, trade secret, data, Confidential Information, business or company names or other proprietary rights and any rights to registration of such rights, and including all applications for and renewals or extensions of such rights, and all similar and equivalent rights or forms of protection, whether created before or after the effective date of these Terms, and whether protected under common law or statute and “Intellectual Property Rights” means all rights in the Intellectual Property.

• ISP means an internet service provider in South Africa.

• ISP Services means internet services.

• Losses means all losses, liabilities, damages, claims, actions, proceedings, costs and expenses (including legal fees) however arising.

• Online Platform refers to the digital service offered as part of the Sustainable Schools Programme that facilitates online interactions between different users and/or who interact with the services offered on the platform via the internet (found at www.sustainableschools.natureconnect.earth.

• Personal Information means information or opinion, whether true or not, about a natural person whose identity is or can reasonably be ascertained from the information or opinion.

• School means any South African, primary or secondary school, including government or independent schools, registered with the Department of Basic Education or the Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa. This also includes any early childhood development centre registered with Sustainable Schools.

• School Community Content means any Content uploaded to the Online Platform by a School, where the School has elected to make the Content available to be accessed by all authorised Sustainable School users.

• School Private Content means all Content uploaded to the Online Platform by a School where the School has selected the Private Access Option.

• Supporting Partner means a person or entity engaged by Nature Connect or a School to support the School’s participation in the Programme, and includes its contractors, agents and employees.

• Sustainable Schools means the Nature Connect Programme created to support schools embed Education for Sustainability in teaching, learning and action projects at school.

• Terms means these Terms of Use.

• User Account means the Sustainable Schools profile created by you, confirmed and issued by Nature Connect, in order for you to have access to this Online Platform.

• Your Comments means any comments, information, opinions or other material submitted to the Online Platform for the purpose of communicating with a School, or Nature Connect, about a School’s participation in the Sustainable Schools Programme.

• Your Content means all Content, including Your Comments, uploaded to the Online Platform by you.

ELIGIBILITY TO USE THIS ONLINE PLATFORM

• If you are a Sustainable Schools Implementing Partner, you may not use the Online Platform unless you:
  • have a current Implementing Partner Agreement with Nature Connect;
  • have been issued with a User Account by Nature Connect; and
  • agree to these Terms.
• If you are a Sustainable Schools Supporting Partner, you may not use the Online Platform unless you:
  • Have a current Supporting Partner Agreement with Nature Connect;
  • have been issued with a User Account by Nature Connect; and
  • agree to these Terms.
• You warrant that all information provided by you to Nature Connect at the time that your User Account is registered is accurate and that you will keep that information up to date by making any necessary changes to such information on the Online Platform.

USE OF THE ONLINE PLATFORM

• You agree to use the Online Platform for the sole purpose of supporting a School to participate in the Sustainable Schools Programme.
• You agree to comply with our reasonable directions from time to time in relation to your access to or use of the Online Platform.
• You agree to use the Online Platform in good faith, and to, at all times, comply with these Terms and all applicable laws, statutes and regulations in all jurisdictions that relate to your access to or use of the Online Platform.
• You agree to access the Online Platform using your User Account only and not use any other person’s or School’s account.

ALLOWING OTHERS TO ACCESS YOUR USER ACCOUNT

• You agree to take all reasonable steps to ensure that your password remains confidential.
• You may create a new user account for your employees, contractors or agents, but solely for the purpose of accessing the Online Platform to perform your obligations in relation to Sustainable Schools.
• You agree to notify Nature Connect if you have reason to believe that your password, or a password issued by you, may have been disclosed, other than in accordance with these Terms.
• You agree that by creating a new user account, you are allowing the recipient of the user account to act as your agent and, as such, you are fully responsible and liable for all actions taken by that agent in connection with the Online Platform, these Terms, or Sustainable Schools generally.

INTERNET ACCESS

• To use and access the Online Platform, you must have access to an account for the provision of ISP Services with an ISP in South Africa.
• Your ISP (and not Nature Connect) is responsible for the provision of ISP Services pursuant to any agreement between you and that ISP in respect of those ISP Services. You are responsible, and are solely liable, for any account charges or other costs incurred in relation to the ISP Services.

RESTRICTION ON USE

• You may not:
  • use the Online Platform for any purpose other than as permitted by these Terms;
  • remove or tamper with any copyright notices on the Online Platform, in Content or in other materials provided to or accessed by you in connection with Sustainable Schools;
  • disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer or create derivative works or functionally equivalent software from the Online Platform;
  • copy or download, in a systematic manner, any Content, or communicate or otherwise distribute such systematically obtained Content other than as expressly provided for in these Terms; or
  • incorporate the Online Platform in any product to be made available commercially (unless Nature Connect expressly agrees in writing with you).
• You may not, directly or indirectly, introduce or permit the introduction of any spyware, virus, worm, trojan, keystroke logger, rootkit or other malicious code into the Online Platform, or in any other manner whatsoever which may corrupt, degrade or disrupt the Online Platform.
• You may not use the Online Platform for unlawful, unauthorised or dangerous use:
  • to conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to the Online Platform, without our express written consent with you;
  • in any way that causes, or may cause, damage to the Online Platform or impairment of the availability, functionality or accessibility of the Online Platform;
  • to engage in any activity that breaches any law or infringes or interferes with our or a third party’s rights (including Intellectual Property rights or rights to privacy);
  • in any way that impersonates or falsely represents any person;
  • in any way that is defamatory, obscene, offensive, misleading, deceptive or illegal;
  • in any way that uses insulting, provocative or hateful language or is otherwise abusive, harassing or threatening of others;
  • in any way that constitutes resale or other commercial use of the Online Platform or Content;
  • to transmit or send unsolicited commercial communications or for any purposes related to marketing without Nature Connect’s expressed written consent;
  • or in any way that would bring Nature Connect, the Online Platform, the Sustainable Schools Programme, its Partners and Schools into disrepute.

YOUR CONTENT

• You agree that all Your Content is, and will be, treated by Nature Connect as non-confidential, if made publicly available by you.
• Nature Connect reserves the right to edit, remove or refuse to publish Your Content. You grant Nature Connect permission to publish, translate and distribute Your Content for any purpose consistent with our general objectives, including promotion and reporting.
• Nature Connect expressly disclaims any liability for any Losses, misuse or alteration of Your Content by any third party, including our Partners. In particular, we expressly disclaim any liability for any Loss or diminution of any Intellectual Property rights that you currently own or may be able to obtain in relation to Your Content.

SCHOOL COMMUNITY CONTENT

• We grant you a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, adapt, publish and translate School Community Content for non-commercial educational purposes within Schools only and not for any other purpose.
• You are required to treat any School Private Content as confidential.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

• In respect of all of Your Content, you warrant that:
  • you own the Intellectual Property in Your Content; or
  • where Your Content includes material in which the Intellectual Property is owned by another person or entity, you have obtained all necessary permissions, authorisations, licences and consents (including any necessary consents to infringe moral rights) required for the use of such materials consistent with these Terms.

• In respect of Nature Connect:
  • The Parties agree that all Intellectual Property Rights in the Online Platform and the Content belongs and shall belong to Nature Connect;
  • You agree that you will not contest or otherwise challenge or assist or encourage any other person or entity to contest or challenge the validity of Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property and or Intellectual Property Rights;
  • You will not acquire any rights in Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property other than as set out herein;
  • You agree that you will never use Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property in any manner that might tarnish, disparage or reflect adversely, in the sole discretion of Nature Connect, on Nature Connect or the Intellectual Property;
  • Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property may not be copied, imitated or used, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of Nature Connect or the applicable trademark holder;
  • You agree that you will not use any of Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property or any variant thereof, including misspellings, as a domain name or as part of a domain name;
  • You may not at any time adopt, or use, without Nature Connect’s prior written consent, any word or mark which is similar to or likely to be confused with Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property;
  • You may not use any of Nature Connect’s Intellectual Property to link to the Online Platform, nor may you frame or hotlink to the Online Platform, without the prior written consent of Nature Connect.
  • Any Intellectual Property in Your Content will vest in and remain your property (subject to the rights of any third party) and will not vest in Nature Connect or any other party solely as a result of the publication of Your Content on the Online Platform.
  • If you have any moral rights (or similar rights) in respect of Your Content, you consent to Nature Connect and all other persons using Your Content from time to time in a manner contrary to those rights and consistent with any licenses given to Nature Connect by you in respect of your Intellectual Property.

PRIVACY

• You will, and will ensure that your employees, agents, officers and subcontractors, comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, our privacy statement and any other applicable laws and codes dealing with privacy, in relation to any Personal Information collected, used or stored in connection with the Online Platform or the Sustainable Schools Programme.
• You warrant that you have obtained consent to disclose Personal Information prior to uploading any of Your Content to the Online Platform:
  • from any living person whose image or identifying description may appear in Your Content;
  • and in relation to any real or personal property the image of which, or identifying description of which, is contained in Your Content, from the owner of that property.

CONFIDENTIALITY

• We each agree to keep one another’s Confidential Information confidential unless we:
  • obtain consent in writing to the disclosure of such Confidential Information; or
  • are required by law to disclose such Confidential Information.

LIABILITY

• You agree that you are fully responsible for the Content submitted to the Online Platform using your User Account. To the full extent permitted by law, we exclude all responsibility and liability which may arise from the posting, transmission or use of any Content or other information by you or by using your User Account.
• You indemnify and will at all times keep us and our sub-licensees, officers, employees, contractors and agents indemnified against any Losses arising out of or otherwise in connection with:
  • any breach of these Terms by you;
  • or any claim by a third party arising directly or indirectly out of or in connection with your access to or use of the Online Platform.
• Nature Connect is not liable for any Losses suffered or incurred by any person:
  • in connection with or in any way relating to the Online Platform or Sustainable Schools;
  • (in connection with any disruption to or unavailability or failure of the Online Platform or any part of the Sustainable Schools Programme or interference with or damage to computer systems or other electronic devices;
  • in connection with errors, omissions or inaccuracies contained in any information published on the Online Platform, either by Nature Connect or a third party, or supplied by Nature Connect to you;
  • as a result of any fraudulent use, misuse or misappropriation of the Online Platform by you or a third party;
  • as a result of any act committed by another person in connection with the Online Platform or Sustainable Schools Programme;
  • arising from any circumstance beyond Nature Connect’s control; or
  • otherwise under or in connection with these Terms.

TERMINATION

• We may immediately terminate these Terms if:
  • you have breached any of these Terms;
  • your Implementing Partner Agreement expires or is terminated; or
  • your Supporting Partner Agreement expires or is terminated.
• If you close your User Account, these Terms will automatically terminate.
• Any termination of these Terms does not affect any other agreement you may have with us as a Partner or School.
• Clauses 2.3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 surpass the termination of these Terms.

General

• Unless otherwise stated on the Online Platform or provided for in these Terms, Nature Connect or our licensors own the Intellectual Property rights in the Online Platform and Content. Subject to the licences provided in these Terms, all of these Intellectual Property rights are reserved.
• Assignment. You may not assign your rights under these Terms, or attempt or purport to do so, without Nature Connect’s prior written consent (which may be given or withheld at our absolute discretion).
• Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of South Africa.
• Severability. If any provision, or part of a provision, of these Terms is found to be illegal or unenforceable it will be severed from this agreement, and the remainder of these Terms will be construed as if that provision or part did not form part of these Terms. The previous sentence will not apply if the provision or part to be severed constitutes a material and fundamental element of the agreement between us and you.
• Variation. We may amend these Terms at our discretion. Where we consider that the amendment is likely to:
  • benefit you or have a neutral or minor detrimental impact on you, Nature Connect may make any changes immediately without notifying you except by publishing the amended Terms on the Online Platform;
  • have a significant detrimental impact on you, Nature Connect will make the change after we have notified you of the change (by any reasonable means, at our discretion) and will display a notice on the Online Platform describing the change.

Your continued use of the Online Platform after an amendment to these Terms has occurred will mean that you agree to that amendment.

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Privacy Policy

This form is used where a customer or person of which the company holds information, and require their consent to be able to share the information with a third party. We understand that your personal information is important to you and that you may be apprehensive about disclosing it. Your privacy is just as important to us and we are committed to safeguarding and processing your information in a lawful manner.

We also want to make sure that you understand how and for what purpose we process your information. If for any reason you think that your information is not processed in a correct manner, or that your information is being used for a purpose other than that for what it was originally intended, you can contact our Information Officer.

You can request access to the information we hold about you at any time and if you think that we have outdated information, please request us to update or correct it.

Our Information Officer’s Contact Details

Email Address:

sustainableschools@natureconnect.earth

Purpose for Processing your Information

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information mainly to provide you with access to the services and products that we provide. We will only process your information for a purpose you would reasonably expect, including:

• Providing you with advice, products and services that suit your needs as requested
• To notify you of new products or developments that may be of interest to you
• To confirm, verify and update your details
• To comply with any legal and regulatory requirements

Some of your information that we hold may include, your first and last name, email address, a home, postal, work, or other physical address, other contact information, your title, and your banking details.

Consent to Disclose and Share your Information

We may need to share your information to provide advice, reports, analyses, products or services that you have requested.

Where we share your information, we will take all precautions to ensure that the third party will treat your information with the same level of protection as required by us. Your information may be hosted on servers managed by a third-party service provider, which may be located outside of South Africa.I hereby authorise and consent to the organisation sharing my personal information with the following persons

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