About us

Pod Volunteer founders, Mike and Alex, have been friends since school and travelled together to Tanzania in 2001 where they volunteered and helped set up a small community charity in a very remote rural region. One of the big ideas that came out of this was to try and find more volunteers to keep the work going as they realised the charity would benefit from having volunteers all year round. The seed of Pod Volunteer was sown!

At the time Mike was working as a teacher and expedition leader and Alex was taking a career break, travelling the world and working as an English teacher and PADI Divemaster. When Alex returned to the UK, Mike had already got things going and they quickly launched a website with volunteering projects in the countries that they had personal connections to from their expeditions and travels.

Since 2001 we have grown organically and now have projects across the world.

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.

Monies paid to to Pod are fully protected. The Association of Bonded Travel Organisers Trust Limited (ABTOT) provides financial protection under The Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 for Personal Overseas Development Ltd t/a Pod Volunteer (Member 5319), and in the event of their insolvency, protection is provided for:

• Non-flight packages

ABTOT cover provides for a refund in the event you have not yet travelled or repatriation if transportation was included in your package. Please note that bookings made outside the UK are only protected by ABTOT when purchased directly with Personal Overseas Development Ltd t/a Pod Volunteer.

In the unlikely event that you require assistance whilst abroad due to our financial failure, please call our 24/7 helpline on 01702 811397 and advise you are a customer of an ABTOT protected travel company.

You can access The Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/634/contents/made

Pod has public liability insurance cover of £5 million and also chooses to take out specialist crisis management insurance.

Pod Volunteer (Personal Overseas Development Ltd) is registered in England & Wales, Company 4458404. VAT GB850751723

We are very proud of the feedback we get from our volunteers. 96% of volunteers rate us as 4-5 stars on independent reviews website reviews.co.uk.

We recommend joining Pod’s community on Facebook where you can contact Pod volunteers past and present:

We charge a fee to volunteers for all our placements in order to cover the overseas costs of volunteering and the costs of running Pod in the UK. Fee levels are set to match costs (on a non-profit basis) and any surplus monies are reinvested in the organisation or distributed via the Pod Charity.

For more details and a breakdown of our costs please click here.

Since 2001, Pod has been providing volunteers to help charitable projects around the world. The Pod Charity was established in 2010 to build on this success by providing financial assistance to overseas causes as well and so far has raised over £170,000!

Read more about the Pod Charity.