Responsible Travel

Exploring the world and volunteering overseas is a fantastic way to help charities and NGOs, support local economies and gain a deeper understanding of different cultures and environments.

It also brings challenges as our projects are in locations where the people and environment can be vulnerable, and flying to them is usually unavoidable. Our love for these places and communities is the driving force for arranging volunteering placements and we want to ensure that our impact is always positive.

RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL AND OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

We openly recognise the challenge we are facing and are trying to do everything we can to tackle climate change – we care deeply for our planet! We have put in place steps to minimise environmental impact and address the emissions from flights.

Pod Environmental Fund – for every volunteer that joins a Pod Volunteer project, we contribute to environmental initiatives in countries we work in.

Carbon offset programme – we offset the emissions from our flights and offices.

Simple steps - we can all take to reduce our carbon footprint while travelling before, during and after a trip.

Read about our approach to responsible travel here including our travel tips!

Pod Volunteer is proud to be a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism. The Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism unites travel and tourism behind a common set of pathways for climate action, aligning the sector with global commitments and catalysing collaborative solutions to the many challenges facing businesses and destinations globally. 

As a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration, we commit to deliver plans aligned with the pathways to cut tourism emissions in half over the next decade and reach Net Zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050. 

Pod Volunteer is a proud member of the SME Climate Hub, a global initiative that empowers small to medium sized companies to take climate action and build more resilient businesses. Through the SME Climate Hub, we commit to lowering our impact on the environment through authentic action, halving our emissions by 2030. In making the commitment, we have joined the United Nations Race to Zero campaign.

RESPONSIBLE VOLUNTEERING

We are driven by the needs of the projects we support. We only offer sustainable volunteering projects where there is a genuine need for volunteers

Read about our 7 stage approach to responsible volunteering and how we ensure that everything we do is driven by ethical choices.

Volunteering with animals – how we ensure that the animal projects that we work with offer the highest standards of animal welfare.

Volunteering with people – how we safeguard and promote the wellbeing of children and vulnerable adults at our humanitarian projects.