Why is it necessary to collect personal data?
Personal data is needed and used for a variety of purposes in hobby and leisure activities. It is pretty evident that the hobby organiser needs to know the names of the participants. The organiser often also needs to know the contact details of the child or young person and their custodian. In many cases, contact details are needed for informing the participants about the activity and any changes in schedules. At least a nominal fee is charged for most hobbies. In practice, contact details are thus also needed for billing. It is also important that the hobby organiser knows the participants’ contact details in case something unexpected happens. For example, children can suffer big and small accidents and injuries at a football training camp or during a scouts’ trip to the woods, and the instructors need to be able to contact the custodians if that happens.
Collecting the child’s or young person’s health data can also be necessary in some cases. For example, you child could have a serious allergy or other chronic disease that the adults should know about to guarantee the child’s safety. On the other hand, health information with no relevance to the hobby is not necessary, and you do not have to give such information. Neither does the hobby organiser have the right to process unnecessary information.
For example, when your child’s art school continues after the summer, they do not need to know that your child had the measles in early spring, before they had even signed up for the art school.
The information needed by the organiser largely depends on the type of the activity. You could say that the more serious the child and club are about the hobby and success, the more personal data needs to be processed in connection with the hobby.
An art school that a child goes to once a week for fun requires much less personal data than a sports club that travels to tournaments, sometimes even to foreign countries. Everyone understands that registering for trips and competitions requires the processing of a much greater amount of personal data than going to art school once a week.
