What are we all about?

PoD is a leading non-profit organisation arranging ethical, inspiring and supported volunteering opportunities around the world.

We work with long term projects that we know personally and where there is genuine benefit to local communities. 

Whether it is for 1 week or 6 months, volunteers are needed to help work with disadvantaged children, communities, animals and conservation projects in Belize, Cambodia, Nepal, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand and Vietnam. 

We are passionate about giving volunteers of all ages the opportunity to use their energy, enthusiasm and personality where it counts.

Our values

• We care deeply for the projects we work with and our volunteers
  
• We are honest and try to manage expectations as accurately as possible
• We take a personal approach to volunteers and our projects, including visiting all projects regularly
• We are very experienced and provide high quality placements, which stems from a thorough knowledge of locations and projects
• We operate on a non-profit basis and try to keep costs as low as possible for volunteers
• We enjoy it and are very passionate!

Our philosophy is that we should show love, care and assistance to those who have less and by so doing we will learn more about ourselves and the world. The more we learn about our world and the cultures and ecosystems within it the more we will care for it and the people in it.

How did it start?

PoD was set up in 2001 by Mike Beecham, Alex Tarrant and Rachel Smith to provide a link between small charities and other organisations in less developed countries and people in the UK (and other countries) wishing to do something worthwhile abroad.

We (Mike, Alex and Rach) volunteered together in 2001 helping to set up a small charity in Tanzania which lead to a request for more volunteers to continue the work, so the seed of PoD was sown!

Our lives have been shaped by the many different places we have travelled to and the people we have met and worked with around the world. We are passionate about helping others to share these experiences.

How we choose the projects we work with

Although we are approached regularly by organisations looking for volunteers, we only take on a few new projects each year. Most come from personal relationships that we have developed while travelling and living overseas and we select and vet our projects very carefully. We visit all projects personally and do not send volunteers to do anything we wouldn’t want to do / haven’t done ourselves.

We only work with genuine projects that have a long-term commitment to the communities and environments they are based in. The projects exist regardless of volunteers but can only achieve as much as they do with the much needed support they get from volunteers. Volunteers never replace or take local jobs and will usually be working alongside local staff and people.

We get actively involved in all our projects on an ongoing basis, supporting them through provision of volunteers, advice, assistance and financial donations.

The benefit - it must be two way

We believe that for any successful volunteer experience there must be a clear two way benefit. Benefit to the individual who is giving their time and money, and benefit to the project or organisation they are working with. To illustrate this we feel the best way is to let you hear directly from the volunteers and organisations we work with:

• What volunteers say about PoD and the experience of volunteering - please click here
• What the overseas organisations and projects say about having volunteers - please click here

We are very proud of the feedback we get and in the last 12 months on average volunteers scored their overall experience as over 9 out of 10.  We believe this reflects the high quality of our projects, our overseas partners and staff, and the support we provide.

Where your money goes

We charge a fee to volunteers for all our placements in order to cover the overseas costs of volunteering and the costs of running our organisation in the UK. PoD’s only source of funding is volunteer fees and without charging a fee we would not be able to exist. Fee levels are set to match costs (on a non-profit basis) and any surplus monies are distributed to the overseas organisations and charities we work with. Please click here for more details and a chart showing the breakdown of our costs.

Health & Safety

PoD takes the health and safety of our volunteers, our staff and local people seriously. We have a staged approach to managing the risks and health and safety implications that may be encountered in our locations and placements. Please click here to see our health and safety statement.

Responsible Travel

The majority of our placements are in the developing world and often the people and the environment are vulnerable and sensitive. Our care for these places is the driving force behind our arranging placements for volunteers. For this reason we are extremely concerned to ensure that our impact is always positive and never damaging. Please click here to see our responsible travel policy.

Memberships and professional associations

As a highly professional organisation we opt to join groups and organisations where we will be vetted and benchmarked against other volunteer organisations and the wider travel industry.

• We are a full member of the Year Out Group, meeting the Year out Group Code of Practice - please click here to see the Code.
• We have been approved by Responsible Travel as an ethically responsible company.
• We are a partner of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Know Before You Go campaign.

Book with confidence - financial security and insurance

In order to protect monies that volunteers pay to us, we have an insurance policy complying with all relevant UK and EU travel regulations (see below for details). PoD has public liability insurance cover of £2 million and also chooses to take out specialist crisis management insurance.

Personal Overseas Development Limited is registered in England & Wales Company Number 4458404. VAT Number 850751723.

In compliance with the UK Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours Regulations 1992 and the Civil Aviation (Air Travel Organiser's Licensing) Regulations 1995 an insurance policy has been arranged with Travel & General Insurance Company plc to protect customers' prepayments paid in respect of:

• non-flight inclusive packages commencing and returning to the UK
• the ground handling aspects of packages where the customer is responsible for arranging travel to the destination offered on this website (subject to the terms of the insurance policy), for:
• a refund of such prepayments if customers have not yet travelled
• making arrangements to enable the holiday to continue if customers have already travelled in the unlikely event of our financial failure.