Whānau Fun

Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 2026

Whānau Fun is a free community app built by Te Awanui Reeder (Hemisphere + Big River Creative) to help Wellington whānau find local events. This policy explains clearly what data we collect, where it goes, and what rights you have.

What we collect — and what we don't

We collect nothing from regular app users. No accounts, no sign-up, no cookies, no tracking, no analytics.

Your location (suburb) stays in your browser only — it is never sent to our servers.

The only personal data we collect is when you submit an event using the + Your Event form. In that case, we collect:

Your name
Your email address
The event details you provide (name, venue, date, URL, description)

Why we collect it

Your name and email are collected only so we can follow up with questions before publishing your event. They are never shown publicly, never shared with third parties, and never used for marketing.

Where it is stored

Vercel Blob (cloud storage)

Submitted event data is stored in Vercel Blob — a service run by Vercel, Inc., a US company. This means your data sits on servers based in the United States and is subject to Vercel's privacy policy.

We are transparent that this is not Aotearoa-based infrastructure. We are working toward improving this as the app grows.

Vercel's privacy policy: vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy

Your rights

You have the right to:

Access — see what data we hold about you
Correction — ask us to correct inaccurate data
Deletion — ask us to delete your submission and personal details
Portability — request a copy of your data in a readable format

How to request deletion

Email us at info@bigrivercreative.org

Subject line: Delete my submission

We will confirm deletion within 5 working days.

To request deletion of data held by Vercel directly:
datarequest.vercel.com/privacy or privacy@vercel.com

Event listings data

Events shown in the app come from public sources — Eventfinda, Wellington City Libraries, and community partners. This is public event information, not personal data.

Data sovereignty

We acknowledge that storing data about Aotearoa communities on US-based servers raises data sovereignty concerns. We follow the principles of Te Mana Raraunga (the Māori Data Sovereignty Network) as a guide:

Rangatiratanga — authority and control over community data
Whakaaro — data collected with intent and care
Kaitiakitanga — stewardship of data on behalf of community

Here is exactly where Whānau Fun data currently lives and why it matters:

What	Where data lives	Sovereign?	Notes
Event data & submissions	Vercel Blob — US servers	No	Vercel, Inc. — San Francisco. Subject to US law and Vercel's privacy policy.
App code	GitHub — US servers	No	Microsoft-owned. Open source — anyone can inspect the code.
Your location	Your browser only	Yes ✓	Never sent to any server. Never stored.
User personal data	Not collected	Yes ✓	No accounts, no tracking, no analytics for regular users.

Our current setup uses US-based infrastructure because Whānau Fun is a community-built app with no paid hosting budget at this stage. We are committed to improving this as the project grows.

We are in kōrero | discussions with Catalyst Cloud — a Wellington-based, NZ-owned provider — about transitioning to Aotearoa-based hosting. We will update this policy when that changes.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes significantly, we will update the date at the top and note what changed.

Contact

Te Awanui Reeder
Hemisphere + Big River Creative
Ōwhiro Bay, Wellington
info@bigrivercreative.org